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The Taming of Polly. 


ev ^ 

ELLA LORAINE DORSEY, 

M ’ 

AUTHOR OF 


Midshipman Bob,*' ""Jet the IVar Mule," Etc. 



New York, Cincinnati, Chicago: 
BENZ^IOE^R BROTH BRS, 

Printers to the Holy Apostolic See. 

1897 



Copyright, 1897, by Benziger Brothers. 




CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

1 . Polly, 

II. Polly’s Parents 

III. Polly’s Home, 20 

IV. Polly’s First Adventure, . . . .32 

V. Polly’s Proteges, 41 

VI. How They Fared, 50 

VII. Polly’s Education 60 

VIII. Polly’s Instructors, 67 

IX. Glen Mary, 82 

X. Polly’s Introduction, 88 

XI. Polly’s Friends, 108 

XII. Polly’s Enemy 121 

XIII. Corporal Justine’s Story, .... 127 

XIV. Polly’s Visitors, 142 

XV. The Circus, 156 

XVI. The Celebration, 167 

XVII. The Crib-Straw, 181 

XVIII. Polly’s Revenge, 200 

XIX. Marie 212 

XX. Marquette 

XXL The Taming of Polly, . . . . • 233 



THE TAMING OF POLLY. 


CHAPTER I. 

POLLY. 

I— yi—yi—yi—yi—yi — i — i — i I ” 

The cry rang so full and clear that under other 
conditions it might have been alarming, for it was the 
wild, high-pitched yell given by the Indian bucks 
when charging in battle array or when springing from 
an ambush on their startled quarry ; but it was keyed 
to a far shriller note, and it was a very young voice 
indeed that piped the war-cry of the Sioux. 

Simultaneously there came the rapid thud of small, 
light hoofs, and an outcry compounded of fear and 
admiration, overtopped by one voice that seemed to 
be doing the potential mood all by itself. 

Mrs. Worthington started to her elbow, looking 
anxiously from door to window, her pale face a trifle 
paler as Wang’s straw slippers came slapping down 
the hall at a great rate. 

“ What is it, Wang ? ” she asked, as he stood on the 
threshold, his beady eyes more bias than ever, his 
long queue still quivering. 

“ Missee, HI missee come liding ’long allee samee 
Bluf’lo Bill ” 


5 


6 


POLL y. 


Here six rapidly fired shots interrupted him and a 
young voice was heard calling : 

“ Here you are, Dick. Take him to the stables and 
have him rubbed down well, for we’ve come along 
like greased lightning ; haven’t we, Streak ? ” 

And soon a pronounced pair of heels tapped up the 
veranda steps, down the hall, and there in the door- 
way stood as healthy and pretty a specimen of girl- 
hood as one could find anywhere. 

She was not more than twelve years old, but so 
well grown that she looked fourteen at least. She 
had on a short black velvet zouave jacket braided 
heavily and worn over a full white blouse ; her riding- 
skirt was not the cut-off abomination that spoils the 
looks of nine out of every ten wearers, but was of 
modest make and length, and her low, felt hat held 
a long, black ostrich feather that drooped to her 
shoulder. Around her waist was a belt of stamped 
Cordova leather, with a sheath-knife on one side and 
a silver-mounted revolver thrust in the other ; her 
hands were cased in gauntlets with cuffs almost to the 
elbow, stamped in the same gold arabesques as the 
belt ; and her feet were shod in tiny top-boots, the 
left one having attached to it a long silver Mexican 
spur which she managed as adroitly as a cavalry 
colonel could have done. In one hand she carried a 
whip — not a hunting-crop, but a whip loaded so heavily 
as to be a dangerous weapon even in the hands of a 
child. 

Her bright abundant hair fell on her shoulders in a 
club of rebellious waves and curls ; her rosy cheeks 
glowed, and her blue eyes — not pale blue, or gray, or 
green, but sea-blue — sparkled with animation, and her 
rather large mouth showed such dimples and such 


POLL y. 7 

white teeth as to modify pleasantly the somewhat 
truculent nose. 

“ Oh, mompsey,” she said, “ I’ve had a good 
time ! ” 

You always do, darling,” answered Mrs. Worthing- 
ton with a smile. “ But what was the noise I heard 
just now ? ” 

“Oh, that was the best of it. Jack had to 
go ” 

“ Who ? ” interrupted her mother. 

“ Daddy,” she answered, somewhat abashed by her 
mother’s voice and look. 

“ That’s better. I do not like to hear you call 
papa by his first name. It is unbecoming.” 

“ But, mompsey darling, he /s such a rattling good 
fellow.” 

“ Very true, Polly,” said Mrs. Worthington, unable 
to suppress a smile at her daughter’s quaint expres- 
sion of devotion ; “ but that’s scarcely the way to 
show you think so. If you are disrespectful, others 
might be, you know.” 

“ I’d just like to catch ’em trying it on,” said Polly, 
defiantly. 

“ Oh, ! ” said her gentle mother. 

“ Well, I would,” said Polly. “ And you may bet 
your life they’d eat dirt in no time.” 

“ Ohy Polly ! ” said Mrs. Worthington, again dis- 
mayed at the slang. • 

“That’s what ! But about the noise. Papa found 
he had to go to the Upper Ranch to see some Clydes- 
dales that were coming in this morning, and he said 
you hadn’t been well last night and for me to come 
back and tell you you mustn’t worry if he wasn’t here 
till late. I told him you wouldn’t, for what was there 


a 


POLL y. 


to worry about a great fellow like him ? and I did want 
to go the worst sort ; but he said : ‘ Yes, my little Bess 
will ; so you just turn around and trot home, Major- 
General, and tell her what I say.’ 

“ Well, I came along feeling pretty hot under the 
collar till I remembered the dear old chap was gener- 
ally right, and then I played Indian. I pretended 
papa had been captured and I had escaped to the fort 
to bring help. I lammed Streak, and we came slam- 
ming along over wires and ditches ” 

“ Oh, Polly-Wolly ! ” groaned her mother, sotto voce. 
“ ‘ Lam, slam ’ ! Dear, dear ! ” 

“ — till I got near the house, and then I played / 
was the Indian chief leading the charge. I rode 
squaw fashion and gave the war-whoop as I dashed 
up the road. Just then Mammy Margaret came out 
on the gallery and began to scold, and the men ran 
out from the stables, and, mompsey, Texas Dick was 
with them. So, to show him I hadn^t forgot what he 
taught me, I scrambled up into the saddle and came 
along standing and shooting like the men in the 
Cossack drill he used to do at the fort. The boys 
cheered, and you just ought to have heard Mammy 
Margaret rage ; she went on like a stamp-mill having a 

fit ” A peal of infectious laughter interrupted her 

words, but as that passed she looked grave and added : 
“ She said something I didnT like, so I wouldn’t tell 
her I was sorry I scared her, and I called her a 
hateful old thing.” 

“Oh, daughter! ” said Mrs. Worthington as soon as 
she could recover her breath after this last exploit, 
“you said that to Mammy Margaret, your foster- 
mother, who loves you so ? ” 

“ Yes’m,” said Polly, “I did. She hadn’t any busi- 


POLL y. 


9 


ness to say what she did, and I’ll get even with her 
some time, sure as guns.” 

“ What did she say ? ” 

“ She — she said: ‘ The Blessed Virgin would blush in 
heaven to see you behave so.’ I wasn’t doing anything 
wrong, mamma, and she sha’n’t say such things. She 
shan't!'' And she stamped her foot until the spur 
jingled like a bell. “ What did she mean, anyway ? ” 
And, as she looked up at her mother from the floor at 
the side of her couch, where she threw herself, her 
vivid blue eyes were full of tears. 

“ Well, darling, it was not exactly a ladylike thing — ” 

“ But no hartHy mompsey, you know it was no 
harm,” and she fondled the delicate hand she held. 

“Certainly no harm, but very unlike any of the 
things done by Mammy Margaret’s idols — the young 
ladies of Clonbree, for instance,” said Mrs. Worthing- 
ton, smiling gently into the hot, troubled young face 
and smoothing with loving touch the tangled curls. 

“Yes,” said Polly reluctantly; “but I don’t care, 
anyway — they are only foreigners, after all ; and no 
English in mine, thank you.” 

“ Polly ! ” said her mother again, and it was astonish- 
ing how many meanings could be given that little name 
by that sweet voice. 

“ Well, I don’t. But what did she mean about the 
Blessed Virgin, anyhow ? ” 

“ I am not sure,” answered Mrs. Worthington 
thoughtfully ; “ but I think it’s because the Roman 
Catholics take her as the model of every womanly 
virtue, especially modesty, and if anything is done to 
shock their idea of that they think it grieves her ” 

“ Mamma ! ” interrupted Polly, bouncing to her feet, 
diO you think I’m immodest ?” 


POLLY'S PARENTS. 


lO 

“ No, my little daughter, I certainly do not, and 
neither does Mammy Margaret,” said Mrs. Worthing- 
ton with unmistakable emphasis, for Polly was stand- 
ing with her hand on her breast as though she had 
received a blow, her face working, and quivering all 
over. “ Come, sit here by mother and let’s talk about 
it. You see you are growing up now, and many things 
little Polly could do safely and even to her advantage 
— such as strengthening her muscles with all sorts of 
out-door sports — big Polly must change and modify, 
so as to take in hand the new duties that will come 
with the new years.” 

“ I don’t understand,” murmured poor Polly. 

“ Well, then, never mind to-day, darling ; but be 
sure of one thing : you have done nothing wrong, 
and I’m glad Dick’s heart was rejoiced by your re- 
membering his wild riding. Go bring him into the 
dining-room, have Wang give him his lunch, and then 
bring him to see me for a little while. Papa thinks 
highly of his courage and honesty, and so do I.” 

So with the shadow lifted, but not dispelled, Polly 
went off to her hospitable duties, and Mrs. Worthing, 
ton was left to confront for the hundredth time the 
question of how best to do her duty by the only child 
left to her. 


CHAPTER 11. 

POLLY'' S PARENTS. 

NDER a sky like a huge sapphire cup lay “ Severn 
Reach,” the happiest home in the new State. 

Its style of architecture was a faithful reproduction 
of the old home-place where John Worthington and 
Elizabeth Ridgely first met at a house-party given by 


POLLY'S PARENTS. 


II 


the old Colonel, the patriarch of the clan, to gather 
together the scattered kin, many of whom, impover- 
ished by the war and embittered by differences of 
opinion, were on the point of going Westward and 
Southward to find and found new homes. He was 
determined to bring about a kinder state of feeling 
before the separation took place, and it was a week to 
be remembered by all who shared its delight, for de- 
lightful it was from start to finish. 

“ I expect you fellows,” he said the first day, over 
their walnuts and wine, “to leave your prejudices and 
feuds out on the gallery with your overshoes and um- 
brellas. ril give you horses to ride instead of hob- 
bies ; we’ll burn all the gunpowder you want, but it 
must be after the partridges and canvas-backs ; instead 
of fire-eating you shall have terrapin and redheads; 
for after all, boys,” and his handsome old face turned 
from side to side of the table and his shrewd old eyes 
looked kindly, almost paternally, on the faces before 
him, “no matter how we have differed — and each of 
us has followed his honest conviction — we are all of 
one blood, and when you’re as old as I am you’ll find 
that counts more than anything in the world.” 

The little speech was applauded and they joined the 
ladi&s in high good-humor; but on one of the company 
it made a lasting impression and entirely changed his 
future. This was young Jack Worthington, who had 
gone into the Confederate service at fifteen, running 
away from the University of Virginia to enlist, and 
serving with such desperate valor as to win the name 
of “ The Imp ” among the hard riders and harder 
fighters who, under “ Jeb” Stewart, made such a rec- 
ord during the civil war. 

Ardent, enthusiastic, staking every ambition on the 


12 


POLLY'S PARENTS. 


issue of the struggle, his young heart almost broke 
when the news of Appomattox spread to the rank and 
file ; and, with the morbid pride of the defeated, he 
and a handful of his comrades rode away into the 
night “ determined never to surrender.” And they did 
not. They simply drifted down bridle-path and cross- 
road until he, riding alone to the landing, crossed the 
river and reached the Hall ragged, hatless, shoeless, 
hopeless, to learn that a surrender may be conducted 
on terms so honorable to victor and vanquished as to 
become the brightest ray in the blazon of their glory. 

But he found things hard; for, as so often happened 
in Maryland, his eldest brother had been in the Union 
army and had risen in rank and favor so high that 
his sons had been given appointments to West Point 
and Annapolis; his mother, sprung from a race of 
Federalists, was also a Unionist; one sister had lost 
her lover in the Confederacy and was bitter of heart 
and tongue; the other had married a Union officer 
and lived North; while his father, two other brothers, 
and he had worn the gray. 

Love and duty curbed his speech, but every day 
bristled with pin-pricks, and he finally opened his 
mind to his father one morning as they tramped 
through the stubble, with the partridges whistling in 
the corn and the hounds tonguing down wind. His 
army chum was a Texas boy whose father owned 
limitless acres and almost countless herds in that 
land of broad rivers, and he had earnestly urged 
Worthington to come home with him and settle down 
at “ Tres Amigos.” The picture he drew was fasci- 
nating, for it included ranching, raiding against the 
border roughs, and warring with the fierce and tireless 
Apaches. 


POLLY'S PARENTS, 


13 


“ It’s far away, Jack,” said his father wistfully. 

“ I know it, sir,” he answered. “ I do certainly hate 
to think of leaving you all and this.” He waved 
his hand towards the landscape generally, and, war- 
scarred as he was, he had a very boyish choking in 
his throat and the great gum-tree that stood like a 
pyramid of flame on the edge of the wood seemed to 
dance up and down. He “confounded” his throat 
two or three times, and then added: 

“ But what’s to be done here, sir ? ” 

“ I might get you a place in Balti ” 

“No, sir,” he interrupted quickly. “I’m not 
ungrateful, but indeed I do not think I could stand 
that after three years of ‘ Boots and Saddles’. I hope 
you don’t mind, sir.” 

“ No, Jack,” said his father slowly. Then: “I’ll be 
hanged if I don’t wish I could go along with you!” he 
broke out. “ I’d do it, too, if it wasn’t for my lady up 
yonder at the Hall. But she loves the very brick- 
bats in the old house, and it would break her heart to 
leave Nick and Ran. However, don’t make up your 
mind to anything before the end of the year. Let’s 
all be together once more at Christmas — all of us that 
can,” with a quick sigh for a boy lost in the Wilder- 
ness and another reported “missing ” after a wild foray 
on the Red River. “ I’ve got to fatten you up too,” 
he added with a laugh. “You’re as thin as a weasel, 
and I’d be ashamed to send a boy of mine anywhere 
looking as you do.” 

And that night the mail brought the old Colonel^s 
letter broaching his project to his nephew and urging 
him to use his influence towards carrying out the 
plan. 

At the appointed time they rode across country to 


14 


FOLLY'S PAFENTS. 


Snowdon Manor through a sleet that stung like bees, 
and Jack’s horse fell and rolled over on his foot, not 
breaking any bones, but bruising it too severely for 
him to join the guns in the morning. So he hobbled 
into the library and sat there half-reading, when the 
door swung slowly open and one of the prettiest little 
girls he had ever seen stood gazing at him. She had 
a book in her hand and held it towards him, looking 
shyly up at the tall, gaunt lad who had risen and 
waited her pleasure as though she were a duchess. 

“ I’m Elizabeth,” she said at last, blushing furiously, 
“ and I — I — thought you’d like to look at my 
Christmas book.” 

“ Thank you,” said Jack, “ I would. Won’t you sit 
down and tell me about it ? ” 

“It’s Hans Andersen,” she said, slipping round the 
table while Jack drew up a chair. “ It’s lovely. I 
like ‘ What the Moon Saw ’ best, but ” — politely — 
“you might like ‘Kay and Gerda ’ better or the 
‘ Little Match-girl but they make you cry dreadfully, 
so its cheerfuller to read ‘ The Mermaid ’ and ‘ The 
Lead Soldier.’ Shall I read to you, or will you look 
at the pictures and choose which story you’d like 
best ? ” 

“ That’s a good plan,” answered Jack, entirely 
charmed by her earnestness and her shy, pretty man- 
ner. “ But how does it happen you’re not out 
there ? ” nodding towards the pleasaunce, where the 
other children visitors were shrieking with glee at 
their games. 

“Why,” she said, “ I thought you’d be lonesome, 
so I asked mamma if I might come, and she said yes, 
maybe I could help you through an hour or two till 
lunch, when you’ll have plenty of company.” 


POLLY'S PARENTS. 1 5 

“ That was very kind,” he said, touched by the 
childish sacrifice. 

“ So I brought my book, for it’s the nicest and 
amusingest ” — here she looked anxiously at him, 
doubtful of the word; but he never smiled and she 
went on — “ thing I’ve got. It’s better than Bull- 
finch’s ‘Age,’ I think, but Tom says it ain’t. Oh,” she 
broke off in some dismay, “ maybe rather have 

Bullfinch too.” 

“ No, indeed,” he said heartily but vaguely, for the 
‘ Age of Fable ’ was not one of his intimate book- 
friends. “ No Bullfinches for me, but just Hans 
Andersen.” 

“ I’m so glad! ” she cried, clapping her hands and 
her face dimpling into the sunniest of smiles. 

“ You see,” she added confidentially, “ I really 
oughtn’t to have had it until Christmas day, but Tom 
couldn’t keep the secret, so uncle just let me bring it 
along.” 

And that was the first time Polly’s parents ever saw 
each other, and a great friendship sprang up between 
the cousins of eight and eighteen. 

Another relative with whom Jack became friendly 
was a young subaltern in from Fort Leavenworth on 
a three months’ leave. Mindful of the old Colonel’s 
words, he met him (as he put it to himself) “ as man 
to man,” not as Yankee and Confederate ; and this 
youngster told him so much about the Northwest and 
the huge quarter-sections to be had for the choosing, 
the great lakes, the wide prairies whose grassy billows 
rolled unbroken to the Rocky Mountains, the Indians, 
the big game, that Texas soon had a rival, and the 
upshot of their many talks was that Jack and his 
father came over to Washington several times, studied 


l6 POLLY'S PARENTS. 

maps, interviewed Land Office officials, and as the 
spring opened his was one of a fleet of “ prairie 
schooners ” rolling into the new land of promise, that 
stretched like God’s guarantee of prosperity before 
them. 

Eight years of hard work brought their reward. 
His land increased, his stock doubled and trebled, 
the railroad turned his golden wheat into golden 
eagles, and in the summer of ’74, when he came 
home on a hard-earned holiday, he rode over to 
Snowdon Manor to pay his respects to the old Colo- 
nel. He sat waiting in the library, when the door 
swung open and in its dark frame stood a young girl 
so graceful, so modest, so wonderfully pretty, that 
Jack’s heart leaped to his throat. 

“ Uncle sent me to bring you out on the gallery,” 
she began; and as he stared at her she faltered a 
little and added, “ I am ” 

“ Elizabeth ! ” he interrupted. 

And really after that there was very little need for 
anything else, although these young people continued 
to repeat again and again how dearly they loved each 
other, and how wonderful their happiness was, while 
the golden beads of summer’s rosary slipped through 
the fingers of the happy year. 

As Jack’s prolonged holiday drew to a close he 
became very urgent to marry her at once and take her 
West with him, but the old Colonel opposed this, 
saying : 

“ No, my boy. It’s not because I do not love you 
and feel willing to trust my little Bess to you — the 
sweetest little girl the Lord ever lent to an old fellow 
to ease him on the road home — but because, in the 
first place, she’s tenderly raised and used to every 


POLLY'S PARENTS, 


7 


comfort and many luxuries. You must make a home 
for her, and not trust to her roughing it in the hardest 
year of her life. Oh yes” — as Jack made a quick 
gesture — “ I know you’d die to save her a pang, and 
that’s quite right ; you’d be a poor sort of a husband 
for my little lassie if you didn’t feel just so, but for 
all your love and her’s — and Jack, boy, a good 
woman’s love is the next thing to God’s love — the 
first year of married life is the hardest year.” 

“Well, then,” said Jack, “ I’ll wait a year and build 
her a home, but no longer.” 

“ Oh, yes, you will,” answered the old Colonel. 
“You’ll wait till she’s of age ” (eighteen years). 

“ Nearly three years ! ” shouted Jack. “ Never ! ” 

(It was two years and a few days really.) 

And as he said it Elizabeth rode up on her pretty 
bay mare, looking to her anxious lover and her anx- 
ious guardian the embodiment of every romantic 
dream they had ever had. 

“ Why, what’s the matter?” she asked, as her lover 
lifted her down from the saddle ; for his face was set 
in the dour, stern look that in the boy had been re- 
markable and in the man was startling. 

“ Your uncle refuses his permission for you to 
marry me ” 

“ Oh,” said Elizabeth, looking from one to the 
other with a startled gaze, the wild -rose color in her 
face fading and deepening with every heart-beat. 
“There’s some mistake, dear. What is it, uncle?” 
And she stretched out both her hands to him just as 
he asked: 

“ Are you quite fair. Jack ? ” 

“No, sir, I’m not,” said Jack. “But you don’t 
know ” 


8 


POLLY'S PARENTS. 


“ And you don’t know what 1 was going to say. 
Sit here, my bird,” drawing her to his side, “ and 
let’s talk to young Hotspur. Now, Jack, just keep 
quiet till I get through. You’re hopping about like 
a hen on a hot griddle, and I want to put the case 
fairly to you both. I’m my little lassie’s guardian, as 
you know ; but you don’t know that every lease and 
investment runs until after her eighteenth birth- 
day ” 

“ I don’t care for her money, sir,” broke in Jack; 
“I don’t care if I never see a penny of it. I’ve 
enough for both, dear,” turning to Elizabeth, “ and 
I’ll work so hard you shall never miss your dower.” 

“ That’s all right,” said the old Colonel, “ and you . 
wouldn’t be Jack Worthington if you didn’t feel just 
so. But, my boy, money is not to be sneezed at. 
Think of the good that can be done with it. And it’s 
not a responsibility to be shirked, either. She has 
only the income of her property now, and can’t in- 
herit over a third of it if she marries before she’s 
eighteen, or two-thirds if she marries before she’s 
nineteen. You see her mother married when she was 
fifteen, and brother T. B. swore he’d put a stop to 
that sort of thing in his family, and that is the way 
he took to do it, putting Bess in my care in case of 
her mother’s death.” 

“ And three years of our lives are to be sacrificed 
to money,” said Jack. “ I confess, sir, I can’t see the 
force of the argument.” 

“ I’m sorry, my boy, but it’s the work of a wise old 
head. The time will pass quickly, and you’ll never 
be sorry for having respected the will of one old man 
and gladdened the heart of another by leaving him 
his treasure to sweeten his last days.” 


POLLY^S PARENTS. 


19 


What do you mean by that, uncle ?” asked Eliza- 
beth quickly. While Jack added: 

“ You’re hale and hearty, sir. I hope you’ll live to 
be a hundred.” 

The old man looked at them, and slowly shook his 
head, now as white as one of the pigeons wheeling in 
the sunshine. “No, nor yet to eighty, unless the 
Lord works a miracle. I’ve had my notice to quit. 
‘The tent-ropes are loosened,’ ” he added half to him- 
self, “ ‘ and the canvas rolls back like a scroll.’ I’d 
like,” he continued wistfully, “ to turn my trust back 
into your hands, my pet; but if that is denied me, re- 
member I did my. best to be a just steward.” 

He rose, and holding out his hand to Jack said: 
“Try and think kindly of me, dear fellow. Talk it 
over with Elizabeth, for there’s rare good sense in this 
pretty head, and I don’t wonder at your impa- 
tience.” 

They did talk it over, and while the property played 
a small part in the reasoning of these unworldly young 
people, the old Colonel’s words accomplished the delay; 
and in the second year Jack could but bless his wis- 
dom, for the Northwest boiled with an Indian war, 
and the massacre of Custer and his men threatened 
the whole frontier with a prolonged and bloody 
struggle. It delayed his marriage another year, of 
course, and so they fulfilled the conditions of her 
grandfather’s will in spite of themselves ! 

The time wore itself away somehow, helped by his 
responsible, busy life, the dear delight of building a 
home for Elizabeth, and the courage he got from her 
letters; but the grief came they had hoped to escape, 
for the old Colonel went to his reward as the spring 
came gently over the soft green slopes of the Severn, 


20 


POLLY'S HOME. 


with the bluebirds fluting and every blade of grass 
preaching the gospel of the resurrection. 

He was laid in the grave-acre, and on their wedding- 
day, before Doctor Addison came to marry them, they 
left the gay company in the flower-laden parlors of the. 
Manor and knelt at the grave with tender regret and 
loving tears. A few hours later they turned their 
faces Westward, and so Jack brought home his bride. 


CHAPTER HI. 

POLLY'S HOME. 

J T was a delightful structure, and looked from a dis- 
tance like an enormous white bird brooding on a 
huge grassy nest. 

There was a main building of two stories, with wide- 
spreading wings of one story and attic, and endless 
additions for offices, spare rooms, bachelors’ quarters, 
and storerooms. 

A great gallery fronted southward, and the house 
was wainscoted and ceiled throughout with oak and 
yellow-pine, walnut, ash, and cherry. Big fireplaces 
were in every room, with fire-plates and soapstone back 
logs, and wide double windows let in the sun from every 
quarter. Flowers in baskets and jardinieres and vases 
and boxes were as plenty as the sunshine itself, and 
books and magazines were littered from one end of 
the house to the other. Valuable skins and rugs and 
draperies made the rooms like studios, which illusion 
was helped by the collection of curios and pictures 
with which Jack had beautified his home. 

Outside, the stables and stock-yards and kennels 
looked like a small village; and as for the dogs them- 


FOLLY'S HOME. 


21 


selves, Landseer alone could have done justice to the 
variety and beauty of them. 

There were mastiffs with black muzzles and a bay 
like a deep bell-note ; there were deer-hounds and 
wolf-hounds, Gordon setters, two pointers from Havre 
de Grace, a pair of fox-hounds descended from the 
home pack which had a pedigree as long as a royal 
family; then there were fox-terriers, Scotch collies for 
the Upper Ranch, and a pair of bloodhounds that 
wore silver collars and were loved like human beings 
by Mammy Margaret, for they had saved her husband’s 
life five years before, and left such marks on one of 
the road-agents as to bring him to justice and the 
penitentiary within a few weeks of the attack. 

Inside the house a black-and-tan terrier and a blue 
Maltese cat lived on terms of mutual toleration; to be 
sure it was the sort of peace that is maintained by a 
constant readiness for war. But they were well-bred 
animals, and scratched noses and torn fur were rarely 
seen. 

And then there were the horses ! 

The pick of the stock were in the home stables, and 
ranged from a Roman-nosed Hambletonian to a pair 
of Shelties and two Indian ponies that were popularly 
believed to climb ladders and crawl under gates — a 
belief which I am bound to say they justified by ap- 
pearing in many places where a goat might well hesi- 
tate to trust himself, and by disappearing from pad- 
docks where burrowing seemed to offer the only pos- 
sible outlet for anything other than a bird. 

And all — every one of these four-footed darlings, 
these dear, swift, trusty, beautiful animals — were 
Polly’s earliest friends and playmates. She was abso- 
lutely fearless; and from the time she could toddle 


22 


POLLY'S HOME. 


would insist on spending at least half of each day with 
them — on their backs, under their hoofs, rolling over 
their soft bodies, thrusting her tiny hands into their 
mouths, pulling manes, tails, and hair recklessly be- 
cause ignorantly; and the stately or sprightly, gentle 
or sulky, thoroughbreds never started nor winced nor 
growled nor snapped, and the story was often told 
how Henry Clay, the big Hambletonian, was once 
found with all four legs out stiff, standing like a horse 
on a Roman frieze, with Polly under him sound 
asleep ! 

Her mother’s fright and Mammy Margaret’s voluble 
terror somewhat checked her wanderings after this, 
but she fretted so for full freedom that her father hit 
upon the most sensible plan to keep her from mischief 
— he taught her to ride; and after that the long, trim 
ex-trooper and his round dot of a daughter were seen 
everywhere together. 

Up and ddwn from “ Severn Reach,” to and from 
the Upper Ranch, through the wheat-fields and the 
corn, it was the same story — every man and the few 
women within reach bowed down and worshipped 
Polly. All she said, all she did, was admired and ap- 
proved; and if it had not been for her passionate de- 
votion to her father (who was her hero and idol in 
one) and for the tender love she bore her mother, 
Polly would soon have become hopelessly spoiled, for 
the position was this : 

Three beautiful sturdy babies had been born at 
Severn Reach, but had died, the twin boys within a 
day of each other, in spite of every tender care and 
the best skill that could be brought to them by the 
distracted parents; they were ten months old and the 
little boy born a few months later died as suddenly. 


POLLY^S HOME. 


23 


For three years, though each carried a brave face be- 
fore the other and tried to make up for the empty 
ache in their hearts by their love for each other, 
Jack and his Bess grew to know sadder and sadder 
hours, for a home without the music of children's 
tongues is no home at all — just a place to live in. 

But one year all this was changed. Jack whistled 
from morning till night ; Elizabeth’s lovely face was 
made lovelier by the happiness that shone in every 
line; and one bright October day in 1882, when the 
great blessing of God came to them and Mistress 
Polly was born, the whole estate and several adjoin- 
ing ones made a holiday of it. 

Mammy Margaret declared that such a beautiful 
child had never been seen ; and partly because they 
believed it and partly because the baby belonged to 
“ the outfit," as Dakota Dick put it, they spread this 
opinion far and near, and before night a half-score of 
heads had been punched and so many pistol-shots 
fired to maintain it and celebrate it that the wonder 
was anybody turned up alive next morning. 

One thing happened that made almost as deep an 
impression on the household as did the visit of the 
fairy godmothers in Grimm’s story. There was an old 
Indian woman who came sometimes to the Ranch, 
for whom Jack always had some place made com- 
fortable and whom Elizabeth always saw well pro- 
vided with bacon and tobacco before she left. She 
said, and her people said, she was a hundred years 
old ; and there was reason to believe it. Her great 
grandmother was baptized by Marquette just before 
his death, and was burnt alive twenty years later — a 
martyr; for her captors offered her life, freedom, any- 
thing they thought would tempt her, to give up her 


24 


POLLY'S HOME. 


faith. And when she refused they put her to the 
torture of sftwthered fire, so she charred and roasted to 
the knees without friendly flame or smoke to kill; and 
they thrust the points of narrow cones of birch-bark 
filled with powder under her skin and touched them 
off, all the time repeating their offers of life and free- 
dom if she would give up the black-gown^s faith. 

Finally, whether touched by compassion or moved 
by his declared sentiments, a chief leaped out of the 
circle of torturers and buried his tomahawk in her 
brain, answering the furious anger and questions of 
his companions by: 

“ Yes, I, the Great Moose, killed her. If a squaw 
can die so for this Jesus, some of our people may be 
persuaded to follow Him, and He will one day con- 
quer us. Marquette has said it. I will not have this 
so, for my people shall serve their own Manitou as 
long as my horns can thrust;’^ and he clashed his 
scalping-knife and hatchet together with the noise the 
great moose bulls make when they lock horns and 
fight to the death. 

The medicine-men, quick to catch his spoken 
thought, came to his support; and the party went on 
their way down the war-path, leaving the poor body 
there until some of her own people who had trailed 
the captive far off came by and carried what was left 
reverently home, where she was buried amid the 
fierce rejoicing of the pagans of the tribe that one of 
their women could show their enemies so well how to 
die, and by the Christians with the serene hope of 
her eternal welfare. 

Her little child a year old lived to a hundred, and 
her daughter to something over ; and old Winona had 
inherited their long life, their faith, and their wisdom, 


' POLL Y^S HOME, 


25 


for she was the wise woman of all that region. She 
had a strange knowledge of healing and of distant 
events, and had frequently saved detached parties of 
emigrants from ambush and surprise. She was much 
feared by the tribesmen of the Northwest, and justly 
credited by red and white alike with a knowledge far 
above that of their wisest medicine-men. 

She had not been seen for two years; so when it 
was announced that she had come and wished to see 
the baby and its mother, no one attempted to stop 
her except Mammy Margaret ; but on her the old 
squaw simply turned her small fiery eyes, and the 
Irishwoman’s voluble tongue was drained of words — 
how or why she never understood; and she recovered 
only in time to see the broad bent back with its trail- 
ing blanket disappear in Mrs. Worthington’s room. 

Once there she moved gently to the side of the 
bed, where Elizabeth was feasting her eyes on a little 
yellow fuzz that was the only visible indication of 
Polly’s presence. 

The Great Spirit has called Winona,” she said. 

She will soon leave the land of her fathers and go 
to the land of the Lord Jesus. Her brave died in 
battle seventy years ago, her sons dropped one by 
one on the war-path, and no one is left of her blood 
to carry the gift of Marquette. Far away in the hut 
of the stranger,’ where the ice-mountains slide into the 
sea and the sun burns up the dark for six moons, she 
has heard the cry of a new-born baby ; for nine 
moons she has heard it and she followed the sound, 
for she knew one was sent to wear the gift of Mar- 
quette. This is the one. She will be as a wheat- 
field ripe in the sun, as a pine-tree tall on the 
mountains, as a spring of sweet water in the lava- 


26 


POLLY'S HOME. 


beds. And when the time comes, that friend of his 
Master, the black-gown Marquette, will send her the 
blessing that must reach all he watches over.” 

Elizabeth had heard of this gift of Marquette, as 
indeed had every one in that part of the country, the 
good Indians revering it, but the illy-disposed fearing 
it as a mighty medicine that would bring instant 
death to him who touched it. The few whites who 
coveted it and might have stolen it lost all interest 
when they saw only a black oval of metal crusted 
with grease and dirt. 

Knowing how the old squaw valued it, she thanked 
her with sweet grace, and asked : “ But will you want 
to part with it, mother?” — that being the name her 
tender respect for old age had given her. 

“ White Lily,” answered the old woman, “ I part 
with that and this together” — and she laid her hand 
on her withered breast. “ The little one must wear 
it. I, Winona, say it. Never let her part with it. 
Never let her forget him who gave it, and never let 
her forget her whose spirit went out by fire for the 
faith. 

‘‘Three of your buds have died in the frost [death], 
and the winter was long before the spring came to 
you. This one you will keep, and the bud will grow 
to a bush and the flowers will fill the land.” 

“ Oh, mother,” said Elizabeth, already full of hopes 
and fears for her little one, “ how can I feel sure she 
will live ? ” 

“ For ten years let her run in fields, keep away thei 
black-mark books and the stick that drops ink ; leJ 
her friends be the animals that the Great Spirit has 
taught to live. Then if she grows pale and the frost 
nips her blue here ” (touching the hollows under her 


POLLY'S HOME, 2 / 

eyes), “ give her this for three moons in a tea, and — 
pray for Winona who goes.” 

And she laid on the pillow two packages — one very 
small, wrapped in deerskin heavily embroidered in 
b«ads ; the other much larger, and done up in birch- 
bark — and moved away. At the foot of the bed she 
stooped and kissed the outline of Elizabeth’s little 
feet and vanished through the doorway. 

The next morning, when one of the maids went 
to call the old woman to her breakfast, she came 
stumbling back wild with fright, and, beckoning the 
others distractedly to follow, ran down the corridor. 
Through the open door they saw the old squaw 
kneeling by her bed, her head drooped forward, dead. 
In her hand she held a rude crucifix, and when Jack 
came he sent one of the boys off to the fort to see if 
he could catch Father de Ruyter; for when some one 
said, “ Thar’s a parson at Dingley’s ; why don’t you 
get him if you must have a gospel-sharp to plant the 
old squaw ? ” he answered : 

“ No ; she loved her own Church and its ways, and 
she shall have all we can do for her now, poor old 
soul. She’s walked over a hundred miles more than 
once to save white people from death and capture, 
and they say that three years ago she and her pony 
nearly drowned when the ice was breaking up, be- 
cause she would cross to get to the Easter ser- 
vice.” 

And in doing this tender charity to the dead 
woman Jack won a gift for his baby daughter of 
which he little dreamed. 

Father de Ruyter was at the fort, having stopped 
to shrive the Catholic soldiers in the regiment, and 
was much distressed when he heard that the cele- 


28 


POLLY'S HOME. 


brated old Catholic Indian had died before he had 
met her ; for her fame was great through the ranks of 
the priesthood, she having been one of the guardian 
spirits of the Church in that wild Northwest, having 
protected the missionaries again and again, having 
travelled miles to bring the sacraments to the dying, 
and having once carried the Blessed Sacrament in 
her breast for a week, suffering hunger, thirst, and 
bitter cold, rather than risk its profanation by the war- 
party who had shot the old priest at his rustic altar 
and captured or slain such of his congregation as 
failed to escape at the first war-whoop. 

Oh, those early martyrs of the Church in America, 
those simple, fervent converts of Breboeuf, Jogues, 
Lallemant, and the glorious company the Society of 
Jesus has contributed to martyrology ! When will 
their names be inscribed in gold on vellum and sent 
to the Vatican, there to become one of its precious 
treasures ? 

Father de Ruyter wrote a note to Jack, telling him 
he was to say Mass early the next morning for the 
garrison, giving holy communion to the Catholics, 
but that immediately afterwards he would come to 
Severn Reach. He sent two long yellow candles, 
“candles made of the wax of bees,” and asked Jack 
to have them set at her head and feet when she was 
made ready for the grave, and to put her beads in her 
hands ; all of which he intrusted to Mammy Margaret, 
a Catholic herself, who cn learning more of Winona’s 
history gladly undertook it, and a little later reverently 
finished it ; for when she opened the old bodice and 
ripped off the faded skirt of the dead Indian she found 
her dressed in the habit of the Third Order of St. 
Francis, her brown scapular fresh and new, and her 


POLLY'S HOME. 


29 


rosary so polished by the friction of her pious fingers 
as to tell its own story of her devotion to the Blessed 
Virgin. 

After lighting the candles she knelt to offer the De 
Profundis for the soul facing judgment, and as she 
prayed, a daring, splendid idea filled her heart and 
brain. 

Two weeks before her youngest child had died of 
croup, and her violent grief had unfitted her for any 
and every duty until the day before, when Polly was 
born ; the first cry of that young lady seemed to 
steady her nerves and clear her brain so effectually 
that when the old doctor from the fort had told her to 
take the baby and nurse it, she had uttered a hearty 
“ God bless you, doctor ! ” and had settled in a corner 
almost radiant. As she brooded over the little head she 
began to think of the very first thing that seems to 
come into the mind of a good Irish Catholic — the 
baptism of the little new soul. 

“Of course, darlint,” she muttered, “ av ye’re in 
danger I’ll do it meself, but God forbid ye’ll be in 
danger, and God send ye a complete baptism. There, 
there, lamb of the fold, little eye of my head, the 
the Holy Innocents will see to ’t that ye can play wid 
them in heaven.” 

And, as I said, while praying for Winona she sud- 
denly realized that half of her prayer was granted — 
the opportunity for “complete baptism” was on the 
way, and she would go and beg it from the master and 
mistress, as she called them^ — for love’s sake, be it un- 
derstood, for the spirit of 1776 was so congenial to the 
spirit of 1798 that Margaret was a very independent 
citizen indeed. 

She stole gently into Elizabeth’s room and sat wait- 


30 


POLLY'S HOME. 


ing her chance to open up her subject, when it was 
opened for her. 

‘‘ Margaret, where is Winona?” 

“ Eh, honey, she’s gone.” 

“ Gone home to her people ? ” 

“ Yes’m — and that’s no lie,” she added to herself. 

“ I wanted to see her again. Did you know she’d 
given the baby the medal of Pere Marquette?” 

“ Glory to God ! but that’s a good gift — a great gift 
for the little lady to begin life with.” 

” Yes, but the poor old thing will miss it.” 

“ Not she, ma’am.” 

” I’m afraid she will ; and, Margaret, if she does, you 
come get it for her; for old people have such a clinging 
to the things they love.” 

“ Yes’m.” 

“ And, Margaret, will you look after her a little, 
dear ? ” (Margaret would have embraced every squaw 
on the Reservation for that “ dear,” although usually 
she bunched them in her speech as “ dirty divvies.”) 
“ She talked so strangely to me about dying. She 
was like an old soldier who has got his furlough and 
is starting home. She spoke as though she might die 
to-day. Why, Margaret,” she added as the latter gave 
a gasp, “ is she dead ? ” 

“ Well, yes’m ; ye’re so quick, there’s no denying it 
to ye.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me at first, Margaret?” said 
Elizabeth, with gentle severity. “ That wasn’t truth- 
ful.” 

“Yes’m, it wms, and then again it wasn’t. The 
words I said were true enough, but the way ye heard 
them was different. And, annyway,” she added with 
a touch of sick-room wusdom, “ye have to talk differ- 


POLLY'S HOME. 


31 


ent to sick people : they think quare, and ye have to 
agree with ’em sometimes when the hair on yer head’s 
a-curling at the lies ye do be telling.” 

“Well,” said Elizabeth, with a weak little laugh, 
“I’m not that sort of sick person. And I like the 
truth all the time. And so the poor old woman ’s 
dead ? ’’ 

“ Rich old woman, acushla. For she died with the 
habit of the Blessed Francis on her, and so she’ll be 
sure of the sight of God.’’ 

“ How do you know, Margaret ? And what has the 
habit to do with it ? ” 

“ Why, them that wears it have to lead good lives 
and make their souls [go to their duties] often, and 
there’s a heap of prayers to say all the time ye’re 
living, and when ye’re dead there’s Masses said for ye 
till the end of the world. Now be still. It’s too 
much talking ye’re doing, annyway.” 

But a few hours later when Elizabeth was awake 
she asked about the old woman’s funeral, and when 
Margaret told her Father de Ruyter was coming, she 
added : “ And it's meself that’s wishing it was for a 
christening instead of a burying.” 

“ Why, Margaret, would you christen a mite like 
this ? ” — hugging Polly softly. 

“ Yes’m,” said the Irishwoman gravely. “ It’s never 
too soon to put God’s brand on the darlints, and 
I’m wishing from my soul ye’d let his Reverence 
baptize her in the morning ; ” and she walked away 
with the bundle of loveliness under discussion, her 
heart thumping hard that she had done it. 

When Jack came in to say good-night to his two 
treasures Elizabeth told him, and he said : 

“ Do as you please, darling. The idea is a pretty 


32 


FOLLY'S FIRST ADVENTURE. 


one, for the lambs we brand are put in the home 
flock and cared for by the shepherd, and the others 
go to the butchers. If you’d rather have one of your 
own ministers, we’ll try to find one travelling through ; 
or one may build a chapel here before long. I’ll 
give the land for it willingly ; or, there’s the chaplain 
at the fort.” 

“ No,” said Elizabeth. “ I won’t wait. And the 
chaplain at the fort doesn’t believe in baptizing 
people till they’re grown. What will we call her 

“Elizabeth,” said Jack promptly. 

“ No,” she said ; “ Joan, for you.” 

“ Never,” he answered. “ It’s a hideous name. 
Besides, madam, I wish to be the only Jackian creat- 
ure in your mind and heart.” 

And finally it w'as decided to call her Mary for 
Jack’s mother (who was Mary Ridgely), and Howard 
for Elizabeth’s grandmother (who was Cornelia 
Howard, her daughter having the same name and 
marrying a Ridgely cousin) ; and next morning, to the 
almost uncontrollable joy of Margaret, Father de 
Ruyter, after speeding the soul of the dead woman 
from the portal of the Church, opened that same 
beautiful gateway to the soul of the new-born child. 


CHAPTER IV. 

POLLY'S FIRST ADVENTURE. 

pOLLY was baptized with the medal of Marquette 
on her breast, pinned to her little gown, where it lay 
among the laces shining like a pale star seen through 
a cloud; for when Elizabeth told Jack all Winona 


POLLY'S FIRS 7' ADVENTURE. 


33 


had said, and added that she would like the baby to 
wear it, Jack took it away and put it to soak in alcohol 
till the grease floated off, then spread over it a paste 
of petroleum and whiting, which he let dry, and then 
dipped the medal in boiling water, rubbing it dry with a 
chamois-skin. This he repeated until it was the color 
of newly-minted silver, and revealed the figure of a 
woman standing in an ellipse of light with rays stream- 
ing from her hands, but the inscription, through long 
wearing, the touch of fervent lips, and much pious 
handling, was obliterated. 

Of course it attracted Father de Ruyter’s attention 
at once, and as soon as the ceremony was over he 
said kindly to Margaret, “ That’s a good first gift to 
your godchild ” — for she, to her speechless gratifica- 
tion, was one of the baby’s godmothers. 

No, your Reverence,” she answered, “ I’d have 
been glad and proud to give it ; but it’s a relic Diarmid 
might have bargained off his collar of gold for, and 
been rich when he got it. It’s a kind of holy woman 
gave it to her — Winona the Indian.” 

Then came the history of it, and Father de Ruyten 
taking off the small gold chain that held his eye- 
glasses, doubled it and made a necklace of it for the 
relic, which he presented to the baby. 

As soon as Polly was old enough it was put round 
her neck, and wherever she went and whatever she did 
her chubby hand would sooner or later find its way to 
see if her “ Marquette ” was safe, for that is what she 
called it, in spite of the combined teachings of the 
household. 

One day, when she was nearly eight years old, her 
father came in one frosty morning and said : 

“ Bundle up the Major-General, Bess darling. I’m 


34 


POLLY'S FIRST ADVENTURE. 


riding across to Winlock’s, and I want her views on the 
tariff as I go.” 

“ Isn’t it too cold, Jack ? ” 

“ No, glorious. Hurry up please, my lady, for I’m 
a trifle late starting.” 

And in a few minutes the Major-General, otherwise 
Polly, was bundled up, mounted on a cushion fastened 
to the saddle-bow, and, cradled against her “ daddy,” 
flying along at a rate that almost took her breath, but 
did not stop her tongue. 

“ Daddy, what does the little wild doggies do in 
winter-time ? ” 

“ They snuggle down with their papas and mammas 
and go to sleep.” 

“ Does they mammas put on flannel nighties and 
make a fire in the nurs’ry ? ” 

The thought of a prairie-dog in a flannel night- 
gown with a fire handy was new to Jack; but he said : 

“ Their nighties grow on them. They are fur, don’t 
you know ? ” 

“ Oh, yes. Does they have to say they prayers, 
like me ? ” 

“ Not just like you, ducky. But their own way, I 
reckon,” said Jack, with a vague memory of the 148th 
Psalm echoing in his brain : 

“ Beasts and all cattle, serpents and feathered fowls: 

“ Praise ye the name of the Lord, for His name 
alone is exalted.” 

“ Does they disobey they mammas ? ” 

“ Sometimes, I reckon.” 

“ And what happens then ? ” 

“ What do you think happens ? ” asked Jack. 

“Burns they tongues,” said Polly, promptly, from 
the depths of her own experience, for the week be- 


POLLY'S FIRST ADVENTURE. 


35 


fore she had followed Elizabeth into the pantry, and, 
tempted by the lovely red of a bunch of peppers, had 
first asked for them, then demanded them, and, finally, 
howled for them, and then — oh, naughty Polly ! — had 
crept back to the pantry unobserved and snatched 
one, cramming it whole into her mouth and biting 
it hard when she heard her mother’s call, determined 
to taste it before she was discovered. 

Just what followed she did not remember, beyond 
a fiery anguish, a choking, and yells that nearly 
started the roof-pins ; then being in her mother’s 
arms, with cream and white-of-egg soothing the burns, 
and that dearest voice of all saying : 

“You see, little daughter, when mother forbids 
you to do things, it is always to save you from being 
hurt in some way.’’ 

The remembrance was not a pleasant one, and she 
changed the subject. 

“ Daddy, did Red Ridy Hood live with the In- 
dians ? ” 

“ I never heard of it. Why ? ” 

“ Mammy Margaret says the wolf’s at they throats. 
And that’s where it was when it eated her up.” 

“ Yes, poor fellows. It will be a hard year for 
them,” said Jack, “ and I’m afraid they’re half-starved 
now.” 

“ What’s that, daddy ? ” 

“ Hungry, darling, and cold and sick.’’ 

“Couldn’t they come to mamma and mammy? 
Then they’d be warm and well. Evybody’s all right 
where they is. Couldn’t they come ? ” 

“ Not all of them. But we must do what we can. 
Look, Polly ! ” — and there scudding along was a rabbit 
so big that by the time she had asked where he lived, 


36 ‘ POLLY'S FIRST ADVENTURE. 

and how far he hopped, and what his name was, and 
a few other points in his history. Jack hoped she had 
forgot it all. But she hadn’t.” 

“ Where does the stars go in the day ? ” was the 
next line of attack. 

‘‘ Out of sight.” 

“ Where ? ” 

“ Why the sun shines so bright you can’t see them.” 

“ Aw, Daddy,” said Polly, twisting her head to look 
up and laugh at his joke, as she thought it. “Too 
light to see — huh 1 ” 

But he said, “ Yes’m, ’pon honor. Don’t you know 
when the sun’s bright you have to take your shining 
cross into the presses to see ? ” — the “ shining cross ” 
was one covered with luminous paint. 

“ Are they shining stuff ? ” 

“ Not like yours.” 

“ Like what ? ” 

“ Like the moon.” 

“ Wah-hah-te-nu-tah says they’s the children of the 
sun and moon. The sun’s the papa and he hunts all 
day, and the moon’s the mamma and she keeps ’em 
safe in the dark with her all night. Does she cuddle 
’em when they’s scared ? ” 

“ They don’t get scared. They’re used to the 
dark.” 

“ Oh, yes ! Daddy ? ” 

“ What, missus ? ” 

“ What makes you tick inside ? ” 

“ Sick ? I’m not sick, childie.” 

“ Tick, tick. Like Ben Bow on the stairs.” Ben 
Bow was the name which for some reason of her own 
she had given to the old eight-day clock on the land- 
ing in the main hall. 


POLLY'S FIRST ADVENTURE. 37 

“Why,” said the astounded Jack. “Do I tick? 
Where?” 

“ Here” ; and she softly bumped him with her head 
to locate the sound. 

“Oh,” said Jack,” I know now. There are two 
watches in my pocket, and one’s a Waterbury. That’s 
the one that hammers so,” 

“ Oh ! ” Then a silence of one half-minute. 
“ Daddy ? ” 

“ What, my bird ? ” 

“ If the mouses was as big as the cats and the cats 
as little as the mouses, would the mouses eat the 
cats ? ” 

This was a tax on fur Jack had not thought of 
when he proposed his talk on the tariff. 

“ Would they, papa ? And if the hawks couldn’t 
fly and the chickens could, would the chickens ” 

“Yes, Polly,” broke in Jack hastily, “they would 
indeed; for they’d be glad of a chance to hit back.” 

And so on, and so on, until Mr. Winlock’s ranch 
was reached and the business between the two men 
transacted, while Polly was kissed, petted, fed, overfed, 
and played with by Mrs. Winlock and her invalid son, 
and finally bundled up again and turned out to play 
in the front yard in sight of the windows. 

There she entertained herself beautifully until, 
glancing up from an entrancing sand-pie, she saw 
a man standing looking fixedly away towards the 
prairie. 

She was of course too young to understand why 
her attention was arrested, but it was by the despair of 
that lonely figure. His cheeks were sunk, his shoul- 
ders bowed, his matted rough hair was tied with a bit 
of old calico, his blanket was thin and ragged, and his 


38 


POLLY'S FIPST ADVENl'UPE. 


shrunken legs curved in from weakness. As slie 
looked he extended both arms and then dropped them 
with a mournful shake of his head as if he saw no 
hope anywhere. 

Immediately there came into Polly’s head what 
Mammy Margaret and her father had told her, and her 
heart went out to the poor fellow. 

Running up to him she took his hand — he giving a 
great start, for her light feet had made no sound — and 
said : 

“ Is the wolf at your throat ? ” 

His wild eyes fixed themselves on her in amaze- 
ment. 

“ I’ve asked for a sign,” he muttered; “I’ve beaten 
against the door of the sky ” 

“Are you hungry and sick and cold?” she went 
on. 

“Who sent you, child?” he asked, beginning to 
tremble. 

“Nobody sent me. But my papa. Jack Worthing- 
ton, brang me,” she answered impressively, sure always 
of the effect her father’s name produced, although 
ignorant that half of it was due to her evident love and 
pride. 

This time it was startling. 

“ Are you the one that wears the medicine of the 
black-gown — the medicine of Marquette ? ” he asked 
eagerly as he seized her by the arm. 

“ Course,” she answered, wriggling herself free, and 
diving into the fat creases of her neck for the chain 
and tugging at it until the medal slipped out. As it 
flashed softly in the sun the Indian started back. 

“ I asked for a sign,” he gasped. “ Ghesis, behold 
it!” 


POLLY'S FIRST ADVENTURE. 


39 


He threw himself down before Polly and bowed 
his head to the ground, then he raised it and blew 
lightly to the four quarters of the sky, and then 
crouching by her he said: 

“ O wise great Little Medicine-woman^ you hold the 
ghost of the black-gown in your hand. Once he was 
hid away, and no one could see him but his own 
people. Now his eye is uncovered, and he sends me 
a message by the sun. My people starve, and the 
women and the little children die. Help us and 
save us.” 

Polly stared at him. 

“ Come,” he said, “ the wolf is at the throat of my 
people. You know it, you said it,” he added implor- 
ingly as Polly continued to stare. “ Come, drive it 
away. Let them see the medicine of Marquette.” 

That last she understood, and she remembered her 
father had said, “ We must do the best we can.” 

Well, her best was to show them her Marquette, 
and how fine a thing it would be to drive off that 
awful wolf ! Her little breast swelled with pride and 
joy, and when the Indian desperately repeated “Come ! ” 
she nodded her head. 

In a moment he had swept her off the ground and 
around past the outbuildings, where a half-starved 
pony stood, had mounted, and they were racing with 
a speed that seemed incredible. 

Polly didn’t like it, for she was held so tightly it 
hurt her; the pony scrambled, slipped, was jerked to 
his feet, and urged faster and faster by the heels of 
his rider. She was getting frightened, too, for the 
Indian’s face was working in frantic excitement as he 
half chanted, half yelled, a strange hoarse invocation; 
the perspiration streamed from him, and his dirt and 


40 


POLLY'S FIRST ADVENTURE. 


greasy rags were very trying to the dainty little nose 
so rudely snubbed against them. 

But she thought of the poor little children — she had 
got past caring for the women by this time — and with 
a courage and compassion beyond her years set her 
teeth and suppressed her tears. 

Suddenly they wheeled down a coulee, and the In- 
dian, raising himself by his knees, uttered a shout so 
wild and thrilling that the ground suddenly swarmed 
with his kind. Then, as he called some words to them, 
an indescribable hum mingled with cries and yells 
arose, and the whole throng rushed to the river-bank, 
where in an open space stood a medicine lodge. 

The men formed quickly in a circle, the women and 
boys outside, and by the time Polly and her conductor 
came up every preparation was complete for a “ talk.” 

As the child entered the circle every eye was bent 
on her, a breathless silence followed, then a woman’s 
voice shrill and starved cried in her own tongue : 

“ ’Tis only a child. He mocks us.” 

A confused echo of this rippled through the ranks 
of the women, but died away as he answered : 

“ Be quiet. Who shall say the Medicine-woman is not 
great because she comes in the shape of a child ? This 
one carries on her breast the medicine of Marquette.” 

A stir went through the crowd as though it were 
water and his words a stone cast in its midst. And 
then he began to tell his story. Polly of course could 
not understand it, which was perhaps as well for her 
conductor’s credit ; for to his half-crazed mind the 
whole affair presented itself in such a supernatural 
light she never would have recognized the facts. At 
the closing point of his tale he turned, and bowing 
reverently said in EagUsh : 


POLLY'S PROTEGES. 41 

“ Show it to them now, and drive far from us the 
wolf.” 

But Polly, looking round in every direction, staring 
over and beyond the close-packed faces, said : 

“ They isn't any wolf.” 

He threw his right hand up exultantly, and inter- 
preted his understanding of her words : 

“ She says the famine is gone. She has driven it 
away.” 

“ But,” went on Polly, “ they is sick and sorry. 
Never mind, you all,” nodding her head encouragingly, 
“ you shall just look at my Marquette as much as ever 
you want to, and when Jack comes it’ll be all right.” 

And she pulled out her medal, turning it to right and 
left. The rays of the sun as it sloped far westward 
struck upon it, and its silver flashes were received with 
rapturous acclamation. A squaw held up a half-dead 
baby to catch its gleam, a young chief lifted forward 
his old father, a woman raised up the fainting head of 
her daughter. 

And over the edge of the coulee appeared a group 
of men, arrested in their rush by the curious scene 
before them. Fierce fellows they were and armed to 
the teeth, and foremost among them was Jack, who 
when he caught sight of that little figure gave a queer 
click in his throat and reeled in his saddle. 


CHAPTER V. 

POLLY'S PROTLgLS. 

« Winlock’s ” when Polly was missed the excite- 
ment was indescribable; Jack rushed and rode 
about like a crazy man, calling his little daughter until 


42 


POLLY'S PROTEGES. 


his voice failed and his throat felt ready to burst. But 
his heart felt so much more like it that he never even 
noticed it. Couriers were sent along the trail both 
ways to see if by chance she had started home or for 
the ranch above Mr. Winlock’s ; riders were mounted 
on the best horses and sent to call out the neighbors ; 
and finally two Indian boys were put on their ponies 
and started across country for the sheep-farm, with 
orders to beat the ground thoroughly. 

Too miserable to understand Mrs. Winlock’s words 
of comfort, he received from her in a dazed way a 
bottle of milk, a little package of lunch, and an extra 
wrap “ for the baby, because she will be hungry and 
cold when you find her.” 

But when he had mounted to ride to the rendezvous 
these words came back to him, and with a swelling, 
agonized heart he thought of those poor little feet, 
that tender body, that weary little head, and a groan 
broke from him that made Mr. Winlock wince. He 
cleared his throat two or three times to try to say 
something cheering, but no words came; and shaking 
his head he reined in and dropped half a length behind 
so the miserable father would at least imagine that he 
was getting ahead the faster of the two. 

The regular thud of the hoofs as the horses settled 
down to their work was the only sound for several 
minutes; then there came tearing towards them Ned 
Crow, one of the Indian boys — arms, legs, wild elf-locks 
flying, an eldritch screech pouring from his throat in an 
almost unbroken sound, and eyes glittering like sparks. 

“ Now what does that young imp mean ?” muttered 
Winlock uneasily. “I started him to the sheep-farm, 
and here he is. What’s the matter?” he called out 
sharply. 


POLLY'S PROT^G^S. 


43 


“Sioux,” panted the boy, “and the kid’s with 
’em.” 

“My God,” gasped Winlock; “you’re lying, you 
young rogue; you know you are,” he added roughly 
trying to believe his own words. 

“No,” said the boy, “I not lie. These not lie;” 
and he handed him a half-worn moccasin, the burst 
flap showing it had not been thrown away, but had 
dropped from a foot, and a tortoise-shell button too 
polished and new to have come from an Indian camp. 

“What is it ?” called Jack, riding back quickly. 
“ What has he heard ? ” 

“ Oh,” said Winlock, as carelessly as he could, “this 
boy’s a smart Aleck, and thinks he’s found a mare’s 
nest. He says some hunter has picked Polly up and 
has got home with her by this time, I guess.” 

But the boy silently held out an eagle’s feather, the 
quill long since dried and with a shred of thread 
hanging where it had been sewed on a war-bonnet. 

Both men looked at each other horror-stricken, for 
the country round about them had begin to boil like 
a pot. Dishonesty at the agencies, bad faith in the 
middlemen, shoddy supplies, and the delayed pay- 
ments of just claims long overdue had resulted in 
such bitter discontent and in many cases in such 
short rations and long sickness that the medicine-men, 
driven to a frenzy by the misery of their people, worked 
themselves into trances and prophesied their Messiah, 
whose coming was to rid them forever of the white 
people and lead them into a future of prosperity. 
Ghost-dances were being held to hasten his advent, 
bucks were slipping away from the Reservation by twos 
and threes, and everything was ripening for an out- 
break. 


44 


POLLY'S PROTEGES. 


The Little Big Horn was not yet forgot, and after 
that one moment of breathless dismay the two men 
by one impulse clapped spurs to their horses, and, 
beckoning the boy to follow, they made for McIn- 
tosh’s Ranch, which was so well provided with arms 
and ammunition as to bear the name of “ The 
Arsenal.” 

Their speed, their looks, called the people together 
as effectually as an alarm-bell, and before they had 
ended their story the head herder, who happened to 
be in making a report, had slipped off and brought out 
carbines, rifles, pistols, and cartridge-belts; and a cow- 
boy known by the alliterative name of Grumpy Guflins 
had twitched the saddles on three of the horses and 
started as many men off to round up the other hands. 

Then the old herder turned to the boy and looked 
him over attentively. 

“ You the son of Blind Buffalo ? ” 

The boy nodded. 

“ Him and me scouted together. He give me this 
here ” — pointing to his knife. 

The boy’s eyes flashed. 

“ You’re the same breed. Know a trail pretty well ” 
— for a boy, he was going to add; but the boy’s look 
of delight (speedily wiped off of his face as indecorous) 
prevented, and he said instead, “ What’d ye see ? ” 

The boy handed him the three objects. 

“ Which way did he head ? ” 

River.” 

Afoot or horseback ?” 

“ Horse.” 

How many ? ” 

“ One here. Three smoke there.” 

“ What kind?” 


POLLY'S PROTEGES, 


45 


“One signal, one warm, one cook.” 

“ Mr. Worthington,” he called, “this here boy had 
better come along, and you brace up; for it ain’t but a 
short run to the camp, and we’ll get there before five 
o'clock.” 

What camp ? ” 

“ The camp where your little gal is.” 

“ What do you mean, man,” said Jack, his haggard 
face growing keen and attentive. 

“ Why, there’s a camp by the river where they’ll 
stay overnight — ” 

“ How do you know ? ” broke in Jack. 

“ Didn’t you hear the boy say there were three kinds 
of fires?” answered the old fellow patiently enough, 
though he was generally known among the “boys” by 
the endearing name of “ Hot Pickles.” 

“ No,” said Jack, “ I missed that.” 

“ Well, he did, and that means all night.” 

“Why don’t we start?” cried Jack. “What’s the 
delay? Come, Hurley, can’t we pull out of this, you 
and I ? ” 

“ Yep,” said Hurley, “ we kin and we will.” And he 
wheeled around and started at a sling trot, and the 
rest soon tailed after. Along the trail they were joined 
by others till some twenty men were streaming across 
country. 

“Now look a-here,” called Hurley, reining up as 
they neared the river, “ I got a word to say, and it’s 
this: Don’t you boys go to manifestin’ of your guns 
too brash. I’ve seen many a white man pass in his 
checks ’cause some fool loosed off a gun ’thout rhyme 
or reason. I’m most sure these here men kin be han- 
dled without no shootin’-irons cornin’ into the argy- 
ment. They’re about starved, and ghost-dances ain’t 


46 


POLLY'S PROTEGES, 


nothin’ but their way of sayin’ their prayers, nohow. 
You hear me ? ” 

‘‘ But you’ll ’low we must be ready to shoot if 
there’s any need,” said a tenderfoot, wishing to show 
he was up to the situation. 

Hurley stared at him reflectively. 

“ Say, when you was baked was there any dough 
left over to make the next fool out of?” he asked at 
length, with a snort so contemptuous and prolonged 
that conversation ceased abruptly. 

And then they rode to the edge of the coulee, and 
there halting looked down on the pow-wow. 

“What they up to, anyway?” muttered Hurley. 
“ That’s a new game, and that there kid’s got the 
pot.” 

Just then the Indians caught sight of the party and 
a short confusion followed, but it was stayed by 
Polly’s little pipe of delight, “ It’s daddy ! It’s Jack ! 
Now you’ll be all right,” as well as by the fact that the 
horsemen sat still with their carbines on their backs; 
while Jack, swinging himself from the saddle and 
leaving rifle and cartridge-belt behind, came striding 
down into the circle, where Polly seized his hand, 
dancing rapturously up and down, saying : 

“ They wanted to see my Marquette, and he said I 
could drive the wolf away, and I corned ” — Polly’s 
verbs and pronouns were interesting — “ and now 
they [there] ain’t any wolf any more, and I told ’em 
you’d take care of ’em, and then they would stop 
being sick, and sorry, too.” 

“My word,” murmured Jack, “you’ve cut out a 
piece of work for me, my lady;” and as he glanced 
around the circle of faces his heart was moved. But 
he said sternly to Polly’s conductor: 


POLLY'S protj^g£s. 47 

“ What does all this mean ? Why did you carry off 
my little daughter?” 

“ I am the Man-who-stands-at-the-edge-of-the-sky. I 
see the winds come and go, and can bring down the rain 
from the clouds. I know where the shadows pitch 
their tents, and I carry safely the fire that burns up the 
land. I saw my people suffer. I knocked at the door 
of the sky, and the voice of the Great Spirit said, ‘ Go 
bring them a cure.’ I went to Winlock’s and found 
the great Little Medicine-woman ” — here he bowed 
reverently to Polly — “ with the black-gown’s charm. 
I asked for it, I saw it — no longer dark, no longer 
hidden, but bright ; and it flashed a message that the 
future was good for us. She came. She showed it to 
my people. She drove away the wolf. We know she 
has done this, and we want to make offerings. 

At a signal a procession formed, and before Polly 
were put down carved pipes, beadwork, coup-sticks, 
baskets, blankets, and ponies. And one old Indian, 
not to be outdone, put down what looked like three 
badly shrivelled cigars, but really were the dried index- 
fingers which he had cut from the right hands of as 
many enemies in bygone days and wore as mementoes 
of his prowess ! 

Polly watched the growing pile with pleased and 
curious eyes, and when it lay completed before her she 
looked up at her father and said : 

“What shall I do with ’em, daddy ?’’ 

“What would you like to do, honey?” asked Jack 
with much interest. 

“ I’d like the pretty baskets and belts and sticks, and 
I ’d like the pipes to give to you and the boys ; but, 
daddy, if they give away they [their] ponies and they 
[their] blankets, what’ll they do themselves ? ” 


48 


POLLY'S PROTEGES. 


“That’s so, little daughter,’’ he answered, well 
pleased at her intelligence. “ So you will give them 
back, eh ? ’’ 

“ Yes, sir. But O daddy ! I don’t know who of ’em 
gave what of ’em. What’ll I do?’’ 

Stooping to lift her. Jack whispered: “Give the 
ponies to the oldest, and the blankets to the ones that 
haven’t any.’’ So Polly turned a radiant face to the 
circle that had reformed, and in her childish treble 
cried : 

“ I’m much ’bliged to you all. They’se awful nice, 
and I’ll keep ’em as long as I live. But yc?u all must 
have the ponies and blankets, ’cause it’s a long way 
home, and it’s going to be awful cold, for I saw the 
goose-bone.’’ 

And while the medicine-man was interpreting, Polly 
scrambled down, and taking the ponies by the lariats 
led them to the oldest and thrust into their hands the 
ends of the ropes. A low hum of surprise and approval 
went up, which increased as the little creature said 
pointing to the pile of blankets : 

“They’s too heavy for me to lift; so you, and you, 
and you, and you,’’ pointing with a chubby finger to a 
number in succession, “ come get ’em.’’ 

And as they obeyed, the medicine-man, again seeing 
all through the eyes of his understanding, said to 
them: 

“ You see the Great Spirit has kept the word He gave 
me. He has sent help, and His face is turned to us. 
The Little Medicine-woman is good as well as wise, 
and so she gives the old men ponies to ride on the 
long journey they must make to the hunting-grounds 
of the Great Spirit. She gives the naked blankets, for 
they must go now on a big hunt for the winter meat, 


POLLY'S PROT&gAs. 


49 


and she knows the signs. I know the signs. The 
north wind has shut up the south wind, and the snow 
will cover the land so the cattle will be hid and cannot 
be found till summer drags them up by the horns 
from the dirt.” Here he paused, and the foam began 
to gather on his lips. Then he shrieked: “And those 
who go on the war-path before the coming will bring 
down the curse, and He will turn away His face 
forever.” 

Whirling round he fell in a fit, the result of the long 
fasting, excitement, and final relief. But the Indians 
thought it was because the Great Spirit possessed 
him, and they sat awe-struck. Old Hurley up on the 
bank, who had caught the words and had seen the 
fall, nodded well pleased. 

“ That’ll keep that band out of it,” he muttered, 
“ and I’ll take keer his words git passed along the line. 

I wish told Winona was alive; but Hi ! What’s 

the matter with havin’ a pow-wow of my own and 
askin’ Worthington to bring that there kid of his 
along ? She'll clinch it. Wal, I’ve seen a war stopped 
by a baby-doll oncet, and a dancin’ man ’nother time, 
and why shouldn’t a kid be better at keepin’ the 
peace ? ” 

The medicine-man was covered with a buffalo-robe 
and the men were drawing off, when Jack went up to 
the oldest one he saw and said: 

“ Let’s talk this out. My little daughter has made 
a promise to your people, and before my friends and 
I start home we want to settle the matter. Hi, 
Hurley, come here a minute, please.” 

And he told Hurley what he had just said, knowing 
the old frontiersman w’as as wise as he was wily, and 
feeling he could do no better than to take his advice. 


50 


I/O IV THEY FATED, 


It fitted in with Hurley’s plan so perfectly that he 
could scarcely restrain his satisfaction, but all he did 
was to say: “ Why not meet at my hut on Far Off ? 
Tell your people to send a delegation, and Mr. Worth- 
ington and the ki — Little Medicine-woman will come 
up — about twelve to-morrow, shall we say ? O. K.” 
And soon the party of white men, riding now at ease, 
sitting in their saddles anyhow, with their carbines and 
accoutrements hanging “ galley west crooked,” were 
out of sight and sound, leaving hope in the starving 
camp and carrying in triumph Mistress Polly, who, 
having eaten the lunch, drank the milk, and been 
wrapped in the extra shawl of Mrs. Winlock, had 
immediately fallen asleep in Jack’s arms, where she 
bobbed about like a warm little dormouse. 


CHAPTER VI. 

NO IF THEY FARED. 

"Y^HEN Elizabeth heard the story she was panic- 
stricken. 

“Oh, Jack, think of it — that little thing! I shall 
never feel safe about her again.” 

“On the contrary, dear,” said Jack, “she’s safer 
than if she lived in the middle of the fort and moved 
with a regiment at her heels. I really believe she 
could ride the frontier alone after this. But oh, Bess, 
I wish you could have seen her standing there. It 
was a picture I’d like to have painted. Erect, vigor- 
ous, unafraid, her yellow hair shining, her blue eyes 
sparkling, and that close-packed ring of dark faces 
following every movement as if their lives hung on it 
— the poor starved creatures. And, by the way, 


TUkY JRAk^b. 5t 

trolly has promised to take care of the whole band 
until ‘ hard times come no more.’ ” 

“ Oh, Jack!” 

“ Fact, honey. And you and Margaret are to be 
head nurses and comforters-in-chief.” 

“ Oh, Jack I ” 

Yes, indeed. I was rather taken by surprise my- 
self, but I couldn’t go back on my only daughter’s 
word, so we are to go up to Far Off to-morrow ” 

“ Who ? ” 

Why, Polly and I — to meet the head men in 
council.” 

“ You, Jack, of course, for any one might be glad of 
your advice,” she answered fondly; “but that baby’s 
going to stay home with me.” 

“ Madam,” said Jack, “they don’t care a picayune 
for all the experience I could lay before them, nor 
for any of the advice I might give them; but that 
baby, as you very aptly call her, has become a most 
important person. She holds in the hollow of her 
little hand, when it holds the Marquette medal, the 
possible peace of this whole region; and how many 
lives her innocent act of kindness may save can hardly 
be reckoned. She is to be the feature of the council 
at Hurley’s hut to-morrow, and I ride simply as her 
squire and backer.” 

It was decided at the talk that the women and 
children and the very old men were to come to Severn 
Reach, where two big barns were to be set apart for 
them in which base-burners were mounted and where 
plenty of clean straw, shelter from the weather, and 
an assured food- supply offered a happy contrast to 
the smoky wicky-ups, murderous cold, and uncertain 
living of the plains. The men were to do the best 


52 


Jiotv THEY FARED. 


they could at the hunting, but were to shelter with 
their families if there was no game or the winter 
proved as severe as all signs predicted. 

Meantime Jack, Mr. Winlock, McIntosh, and sev- 
eral others were going to see what could be done 
about effecting some reform in the abominable abuses 
at the agency; and they determined to urge with all 
their influence the request made by the Indians them- 
selves that army officers be detailed for the work, for 
in them, and in them alone, did the poor creatures 
retain any confidence. 

“ It’s this way,” explained Lame Bull. “ The Great 
Father says one beef to so many families, and that 
beef to weigh eighteen hundred pounds on the hoof. 
That’s very good; but by the time that beef gets from 
the agent’s place to the Indian’s hand it weighs 
twelve hundred pounds, and those families cannot eat 
the meat that isn’t there. The Great Father says so 
many blankets to so many Indians to keep them 
warm, and their children and their women. Those 
blankets come, but between the agent’s house and 
Indian those blankets wear thin and the rain comes 
through, and the wind cuts stripes, and before the 
winter is gone Indians have no blankets. The Great 
Father says so much bacon, so much flour, so much 
sugar to so many families. That’s very good; but 
when the flour and bacon and sugar come, many 
pounds stay behind, and the Indians cannot eat the 
pounds that don’t come.” 

“Is that so. Hurley?” asked Jack. 

“Yes, sir, it is,” said the old man, “and it’s a 
disgrace. That fellow at the agency’d skin his re- 
lations to make leather out of ’em. He’d like to 
bottle the wind and retail the sunshine at so much a 


JIOIV THEY FARED, 53 

twink. It most drives him crazy to think of anything 
bein’ free to anybody but his own self.” 

“Does he ” began Jack. 

“Yes, he does. He sells them there fat cattle after 
they’ve been weighed and he’s shipped off the receipts, 
and he puts in their place a lot of Texas steers that 
ain’t nothin’ but hide and hoofs and horns. He 
sells them blankets and puts in their place some sort 
of shoddy stuff that splits if you spit at it ; and as 
for the flour and stuff, he just coins money out of ’em.” 

“ It’s an outrage ! ” fumed Jack. 

“ That’s so.” 

“ Can’t it be put a stop to ? ” 

“ Yes, sir, it can. But it ain’t, ’cause it costs trouble 
and’s apt to begin all over again with the next fellow 
when the first one’s been bounced. It takes a big 
pull, too, to fight them chaps. Washington’s mighty 
far off, and while truth’s awakin’ up the lies hev took 
the limited express and are most there. The Catholic 
priests and the army officers are the only fellows they 
can’t hoodwink or scare off ; and don’t the agents 
just naturally hate ’em like pizen, though ! ” 

“ Very well ; there’ll be another they’ll hate soon, 
that’s all,” said Jack. “ Now, Polly, what have you 
to say about it ? ” For Polly was nodding her head and 
rubbing her eyes. 

“ Make ’em give the Indians they own things,” said 
Polly, “ and let’s go home.” 

And as this was- what the Indians wanted, the fame 
of the Little Medicine-woman’s wisdom was greater 
than ever. 

Neither Indians nor white people ever forgot that 
winter at Severn Reach. There was much sickness, 
but Polly’s boast was made good by Elizabeth and 


54 


I/O IV THEY FATED. 


Margaret ; and to the children it was a dream of bliss, 
with Polly for a guiding star and Christmas for its cul- 
mination ; for, after talking it over with her mother 
-and father, she concluded that, instead of the splendid 
personal Christmas she was used to, she would rather 
have a big tree for the children, with as many “ useful 
things ” as the money over and above would buy. She 
loved so dearly to give that this was not as unselfish 
as might appear, but it was a sweet, generous impulse, 
and as such brought its happy reward. 

Such a busy season as followed ! Such cakes, such 
pies, such tarts and jumbles as were made ! Yards of 
popcorn, strung on strings or compressed into balls 
with honey or molasses, were prepared and laid away 
for the tree. All the treasure-boxes were searched for 
the ornaments of tinsel and spun glass that had glit- 
tered through the Christmases of Polly’s life. Dolls, 
penknives, tops, rattles, whips, firecrackers, whistles, 
candy, nuts, and colored cornucopias were ordered by 
Jack, who entered into it all like a great boy ; and the 
yards of flannel “outing ’^cotton, and calico that were 
shipped to “ J. B. Worthington, Esq.,” made the trader 
prick up his ears and make nasty little speeches about 
“rich men that wanted the earth, money-grabbers that 
ain’t content to let poor men earn a honest ” (we hope 
it was) “ living, but go and make a corner and then 
undersell the regular dealers off the face of the globe 
for he thought Jack was going to open a rival 
shop! 

Elizabeth and Mammy Margaret worked with the 
strength of ten ; the former with the quiet grace and 
skill that marked every act of her life, the latter with 
the energy and clatter of a spinning-jenny; and it was 
with regard to the “ usefuls ” that Elizabeth carried out 


/low THEY FATEH. ' 55 

a practical bit of reform that is still holding good on 
the plains. 

In reckoning up the garments needed by the squaws 
and children, she was reminded of the work-room on 
the home plantation, where her mother had been used 
in former days to direct the cutting out and making 
up of the year’s supply of clothing for the hands ; for 
this was one of the never-ending duties that slave-hold- 
ing entailed on the owners. And forthwith she and 
Mammy Margaret set up a sewing-class where she 
taught the most intelligent squaws how to cut from 
simple patterns, which were basted by the less skilful, 
and then her sewing-machine was brought in and, to 
the breathless interest of the Indian women, “ de- 
voured ” the work. 

“ It is a devil,” they said at first, “ and eats up the 
clothes.” But when they saw the garments fall away 
completed and were shown the stitches, they breathed 
deep and drew closer to it. Then they renamed it 
“ The one that sews with its jaws.” 

Elizabeth got beads for them too, and set them to 
making bead embroideries, writing to the Woman’s 
Exchange in Baltimore to interest the ladies in their 
story, and urging them to make the beadwork a fad 
for the holiday season ; and she had two of the most 
expert squaws cut and make out of buckskin tiny 
moccasins, with war-bonnets, quivers, etc., which she 
forwarded to the fair at the cathedral in Detroit, tell- 
ing Bishop Foley the circumstances and asking his 
interest. 

So in one way or another the days flashed by and it 
was Christmas eve, and one modern miracle was ac- 
complished, namely, all the Indian children (some 
thirty odd) had their faces and hands washed and 


56 


JIOPV THkY i^'ARED, 


their heads curried into some semblance of order, 
ready for the fray. This was Margaret’s work, and 
I am much afraid she gave them a lasting distaste for 
cleanliness by the relentless way she scrubbed their 
noses up and dowai, bored into their ears, and lathered 
their eyes until they squirmed and winked. One small 
child who looked like an adobe image, he was so dirty, 
she put into a foot-tub set over a preserving-furnace, 
intending to sponge him off as the water warmed ; but 
he, with a lively memory of the little boiled dogs at 
the “ sun-dance,” emitted such awful yells as to startle 
the entire ranch. His feet got washed though, and 
he divided his attention between them and his captor 
until — until 

At seven o’clock the big Japanese gong began to 
boom, the doors of the great hall were opened, and, as 
the last note sounded, the- portieres were drawn back 
and there stood the most gorgeous sight they had 
ever beheld. 

A pine-tree such as Jack and Elizabeth wanted 
they of course could not get, but they had taken sev- 
eral small scraggy ones and by a judicious system of 
splicing had built up a tree the like of which can 
grow only in the land of dreams or in the garden of 
happy childhood — a tree whose branches are wide 
enough to shelter all the wishes and desires of a child’s 
heart. 

On the topmost twig of this one shone a large star 
from which trailed away a shining splendor ; on each 
side two little wax angels in blue skirts with golden 
sausage-curls were blowing golden trumpets and shak- 
ing their gilded wings with every motion of the elastic 
cords by which they hung ; gold, red, green, blue, and 
silver globes, balls, bells, and ovals glittered on every 


IIOPT THEY EARED. 


57 


feather-twig, while each that was heavy enough to hold 
bent under a burden of candy-bags, gilded nuts, full 
cornucopias, candy chickens, horses, and steamboats ; 
lovely sugar apples, cherries, and peaches, as large as 
life and twice as highly colored, sprouted on the same 
branch, while peppermint baskets hung ready to catch 
them, and peppermint canes stood handy to help the 
harvesters' home ; the popcorn wound in and out as 
though a large and Christmasly-inclined spider had 
spun a web, and the balls oozed honey at every pore. 

Under the tree the toys were actually stacked in 
heaps, and the tables to right and left were piled 
breast-high with garments in some one pocket of each 
of which were a candy-bag of tarletan run up with 
bright worsted and stuffed with goodies, a red apple, 
an orange, and a paper of nuts. A mound of Durham 
tobacco in bags and plugs, with corn-cob and red-stone 
pipes for the men stood between, and Polly at the last 
minute insisted on adding candy-bags. “ I don’t think 
it would be kind to leave ’em out. Jack, they’re so 
awful old ; and ’sides, if they don’t want ’em they- 
selves, they can give ’em to they children.” 

But they did not, by the way, for they mumbled 
and munched with much enjoyment for several days 
afterward. 

When the children recovered their breath Polly be- 
gan a march around the wonderful tree, and when that 
was over she called the roll for Jack, who distributed 
the presents. All the dolls had yellow hair like 
Polly’s, and of course this enchanted their little dusky 
owners ; the tea-sets of pewter made them chuckle 
and nudge each other with delight, while the gayly 
striped balls and jingling bell-rattles gave the babies 
an excited air at variance with their aboriginal calm. 


5a 


TtlEY EARED. 


As for the boys, when they held and beheld the 
drums, horns, marbles, tops, whips, and penknives — 
yes, penknives — it took all their ancestral backing to 
keep them from yelling and turning Catharine wheels. 

The distribution of presents to the older members 
was less picturesque, but as gratifying to those who 
gave and received; and many a stolid elderly face and 
many a pretty young one brightened into a quick 
smile as a bit of finery, a ribbon, pretty pin, a thimble, 
or some such trifle, was discovered. 

The noise, chatter, heat, excitement, and close air 
were beginning to tell, when Mammy Margaret leaned 
over and said to Polly: 

“Alanna, there’s something your Mammy Margaret’s 
got for you over beyond there. Come look at it by 
yourself with me first, and then, since you’re so set on 
those little haythens, you can bring them in too.” 

Polly slipped away with her, eager, excited, gabbling 
away sixteen to the dozen, and when the door of the 
library was opened and closed on them almost imme- 
diately, she was entirely unprepared for the darkness 
that surrounded them. 

“Why, Mammy Margaret,” she said, “ where’m I, 
where you, and where’s it ? ” 

“Wait a minute, acushla,” answered Margaret from 
the far end of the room. Then a soft glow shone 
out, and, drawing near, Polly saw the representation of 
a shallow, rock-ribbed cave on whose surface glit- 
tered frost. In the centre, lying on the straw of a 
small manger, was the figure of a tiny Child, with a 
golden “ glory ” about his head, his little hands out- 
stretched. Near him knelt a young sweet-faced 
woman, crowned also with a halo, and close to them 
stood a grave-browed careworn man, in whose hand 


JIOPV THEY FATED. 


59 


was a long staff of lilies in full bloom ; his head also 
wore a circle of light. At a little distance knelt 
three men in strange garments, crowned with the 
spiked crowns of Eastern kings, and carrying in their 
hands gold offerings; and still another group of men, 
clad in skins, barefoot, bareheaded, carrying crooks, 
knelt or stood with wondering looks; and crowding 
between them all were an ox, an ass, and a sheep, 
that stood not far from the young Mother, with her 
lamb at her feet. 

A light concealed behind the “ cave ” streamed 
through an opening, also concealed, and shed a 
golden glow over the little scene. None of the figures 
were over eight inches high, and they were only plas- 
ter of Paris, gilded and highly colored, but there was 
a sincerity about them that went to the child’s heart. 

“ Oh^ Mammy, Mammy Margaret ! How pretty, 
how dear ! What is it all ? ” 

And Mammy Margaret, taking her nursling on her 
knee, told her in her own simple and graphic way the 
story of that wondrous night that saw the coming of 
the Lord. 

Of course she had heard of Bethlehem and the 
Christ-Child — Elizabeth was too pure a character and 
too loving a mother to bar out her baby from a 
knowledge of the One who said, “ Suffer little chil- 
dren to come unto Me” — but this vivid little scene 
seemed to present it to the child’s mind in a new as- 
pect, and she went out of the room with shining eyes 
and rapid breath. She struck the gong as she 
passed, and in the hush that followed she called out : 

“ You all, children, come with me and see what 
made Christmas first of all. This is the fun of it, but 
Mammy Margaret’ll tell you the real of it.” 


6o 


POLLY'S EDUCATION, 


But, surrounded by the children, Margaret said : 

“Tell them yourself, alanna. It’s you have some 
of their lingo, and annyway it’s good on this night for 
a child to tell children.” 

“It’s saint’s work,” she muttered, “and may the 
saints reward her, the darlint ! ” 

And Polly told haltingly, as a child will, but so 
clearly that I’m inclined to think that this was the 
best gift she gave the little Indians that night. 

And when it was repeated in the barns by the chil- 
dren to their elders a general nodding of heads fol- 
lowed the speech of Wah-hah-te-nu-tah. 

“ The tale is the same the black-gown told when I 
was sixteen years old. The tale is the same Winona 
told when my mother was sixteen years old. She say 
Marquette told her grandmother’s mother. Little 
Medicine-woman heap wise.” 

And the old men nodded too, and blew the smoke 
of their pipes to the four quarters and hoped the bucks 
were hunting ; not that they had forgotten their love 
of the warpath, not that age had cooled their hate of 
the white race, but because of the prophecy of the 
medicine-man, which the initiated knew to be true. 

“ Who goes on the warpath before the co?ning will 
bring down the curse, and He will turn His face away 
forever.” 


CHAPTER VII. 

POLLY'S EDUCATION. 


'^HE serious half of it began about this time, and I 
wish I could detail its features one by one, for 
they were interesting ; but, as it is, we must consider 
the next three years in their broad outline. 


POLLY'S EDUCATION. 


6l 


Jack was true to his word, and he looked into the 
mismanagement of Indian affairs so thoroughly that 
the agent was reduced to the verge of apoplexy. He 
tried every art in his power first to divert investiga- 
tion, then to weaken the testimony, then to injure the 
credibility of the witness. But Jack possessed every 
characteristic of his race and native State — well-bal- 
anced head, indomitable will, keen instincts, a tenacity 
not to be shaken, and the faculty of impressing him- 
self and his facts on people in authority that rendered 
his opponent helpless. 

Finally the agent tried to bribe him, and then he 
discovered another State characteristic — a temper 
which when fairly aroused is like a double-barrelled 
cyclone, for Jack took him just between the eyes and 
left him counting stars by the billion and cursing, not 
the day he had departed from honest ways, but the 
day he had been found out — which is the way of his 
kind. 

Wounded Knee had given a terrible and bloody 
object-lesson on the points Jack was urging, and before 
the pitiful powder-burnt corpses of the nursing-women 
and their babies — killed almost at the base of the flag- 
pole — had dried on their funeral-platforms, the affair 
was adjusted, inasmuch as in several places army 
officers were put in charge of agencies, certain of the 
Indians themselves were mustered into the service, 
and the frontier quieted down ; for the rash volley 
had defeated its own object according to the belief of 
the Indians themselves, and, instead of becoming again 
the dominant race, they were herded back to the Res- 
ervations by armed force, there to watch and submit 
to their own gradual effacement from the list of 
nomadic peoples. 


62 


POLLY'S EDUCATION, 


This meant much coming and going from the fort, 
much meeting with and entertaining of official com- 
mittees ; and as Polly was the constant companion of 
Jack, and as the story of her adventure and his gen- 
erosity to the half-starved band travelled far and 
wide, these were great days for the little girl and had 
much to do in shaping her character. She learned a 
horror of dishonesty, by seeing its cruel effects on the 
helpless Indians, that no amount of lecturing on the 
sin in the abstract could have given her. She 
learned the practical value of truth by noting in her 
childish fashion the effect of Jack’s sledge-hammer 
statements about the abuses at the agency. 1 say 

practical value,” because from the time she could 
toddle it had been dinned into her ears that “ ladies 
and gentlemen had to tell the truth, their honor de- 
manded it.” And although that sentence was some- 
what over her head, reaching after it produced a 
wholesome stretching up of her little mind, heart, and 
soul in the right direction. 

She learned common-sense too; for when some fool- 
ish, sentimental ladies at the fort gushed and began 
calling her high-flown names, Jack quietly said : “ My 
little girl, it’s something to be glad of, but nothing to 
be proud of, for it’s part of your duty as a lady to 
help people that can’t help themselves ; and to say 
nothing about it is not only manners, but it’s an 
order from the Big Captain, too: ‘Don’t let your 
right hand know what your left’s doing.’ That’s 
the way mamma does things, and if you grow up 
to be anything like her you’ll be the nicest girf 
going.” 

And she learned self-restraint and added to her 
Store of experiences, for the talks were long and she 


POLLY'S EDUCATION. 


63 


got very tired ; but, as she said : “ I try to mind my 
manners, Jack, and when the fidgets get into my legs 
and I can’t kick’ em against anything, I just wiggle 
my toes instead of drumming on the table with my 
fingers.” Which was praiseworthy, as those who have 
the “ fidgets ” know. 

And finally it was at this time that the “ Cate- 
chism ” was evolved, or rather begun. Its pages were 
the happy hours the father and daughter spent to- 
gether, and the type was all set up in the child’s heart. 
Summed up it ran : 

“ What’s a gentleman ? ” 

A man that’s got to do more to help other people 
than anybody else.” 

Why ? ” 

“ Because he’s had a better chance to learn how and 
noblesse oblige'" 

“What’s his first duty?” 

“ To fight for his country.” 

“ And the next ? ” 

“ To keep his promises.” 

“ And the next ? ” 

“ Never to tell a lie.” 

“ And the next ? ” 

“ To stick to his friends through thick and thin, and 
always to fight fair.” 

“ What’s honor ? ” 

“ A gentleman’s law.” 

“ What does it mean ? ” 

“ Never doing anything you’d be ashamed to own 
up to.” 

“ What’s the best thing in the world?” 

“ Courage.” 

“ What’s a hero ? ” 


64 


POLLY'S EDUCATION. 


“ A man that’s willing to fight and die for what he 
believes is the right.” 

“ What’s a coward ? ” 

“ A man that’ll hurt anything smaller or weaker 
than himself, or hit a fellow when he’s down, or keep 
from doing things just ’cause he’s afraid to — huh ! ” 

And “mind your manners” began and ended the 
lesson until one morning long after, when for some 
reason they were going over it again, Polly said : 

“ Now, daddy, you’ve told me all about gentlemen's 
duties and rules, what about ladies’ ? ” 

“Same thing, Polly,” answered Jack, briskly, “only 
more so, and a heap of it ; for, you see, ladies have to 
help their husbands and brothers to remember all of 
it, and they have to teach it to their children, besides 
being a lot better into the bargain — like mamma.” 

“ But, daddy, there’s fighting and dying for your 
country, /can’t do that. But I’d like to,” and her 
eyes sparkled and her little frame dilated. 

“It isn’t just the dying, honey. It’s the being 
willing to do it, the feeling that nothing in the world 
is so dear as your country, and that you’d give up 
everything you have for its good.” 

“Yes, sir. But the fighting, daddy? The day I 
punched Little Elk’s head you said it was awful, that 
girls mustn't fight, and mamma had the fantods.” 

“It certainly was. But don’t you fret for fighting. 
You’ll get enough of it, one way or another ; every- 
body does, Major-General. It isn’t always on a battle- 
field though, and once you begin it’s worse than a civil 
war.” 

“ What you mean, Jack ? ” 

“ Ourselves, old lady. Our tempers, say — they’re 
the artillery ; and our tongues — they’re the cavalry ; 


POLLY'S EDUCATION. 


65 


and our fists — they’re the infantry charging with fixed 
bayonets ; and unless we get the whip-hand there’s a 
pitched battle when we least expect it.” 

“Is there? But I do think I’d like the real fight- 
ings, Jack, with the bugle playing, and the horses 
snorting and neighing, and the soldiers hurrahing and 
galloping and winning the battle.” 

“Pollikins, winning the battle’s a big thing; but the 
very biggest thing that was ever done in the way of a 
fight was the day we were whipped out of our boots, 
and the American army was broken all up and set 
running like a parcel of sheep.” 

“ What did we run from ?” incredulously. 

“ The British.” 

“Jack!” cried Polly in wild dismay. “Did the 
British ever whip us — us ? ” 

“ Not to stay, honey ; but we certainly got a good 
dusting that day.” 

“When was it. Jack, where was it?” she asked 
breathlessly. 

“ It was in the Revolution at Long Island, and was 
the first big battle of the war. They hit us hip and 
thigh, and crumpled up our line, and crowded our 
men back on each other until the raw levies ” 

“ The raw whats ? ” 

“ The men that had never been soldiers before; they 
got into a panic and swept everything away ; then, as 
they ran pell-mell to a place of safety, a militia colonel 
lost his head and, as soon as his men got safe across the 
bridge, he burnt it and left hundreds to be cut to 
pieces by the English and Hessians. Now, Pollikins, 
‘ Eyes to the front, salute ! ’ for here comes the finest 
thing our land ever saw. In that army was a regi- 
ment from Maryland — God bless her ! — they were 


66 


POLLY'S EDUCATION. 


youngsters and it was their first battle, but they were 
the sort of gentlemen we have been talking about; and 
when the British general seized a big house and began 
to fight from it, the American general knew he had to 
drive him out and off, or else keep him right there 
until the rest of our army got away. So he took our 
Marylanders and flung ’em straight at the British, and 
they dashed ahead so fiercely that they got clear up to 
the house, and there they stood fighting till the British 
brought cannon and blew ’em out of their tracks. 
But they closed up their ranks and charged three times 
after that. Every time, though, there were more 
British and fewer Americans, till all except some odd 
dozens of our boys were killed and wounded ; but the 
army was saved to fight again for freedom, and those 
youngsters had gone to their death as willingly as they 
would have gone to a victory, because by saving the 
army they had saved their country.” 

“Jack, were any of us all in that?” asked Polly, 
feeling much that she could not express or under- 
stand. 

“ Yes, thank God,” answered Jack with grave exulta- 
tion, “ there were — a lot of mamma’s kin and mine of 
all degrees. Smallwood’s whole regiment was made 
up of kith and kin, with the boys for soldiers and 
subalterns, and their fathers and uncles and elder 
brothers for senior officers.” 

“ I’m glad we were in it,” said Polly; “it gives me a 
nice shivery feeling down my back when you tell about 
it. Jack, and it makes me awful proud.” 

“ Yes, honey, but I don’t tell it just for pride’s sake. 
It puts a heavy duty on us, a thing like that; for when 
we belong to people of that sort we have to do our 
level best so they won’t be ashamed of us. And havhig 


POLLY'S INSTRUCTORS. 67 

to do it is the real good of being what the darkies call 
‘ a born gentleman ’ or lady.” 

The horses dashed along as though they had wings 
on their hoofs, and for fully five minutes Polly was 
silent. She was evidently thinking deeply, for she 
asked : 

“ But, Jack, suppose you ain't a born one, what you 
going to do ? ” 

“ The very best you can. And the man that makes 
himself a gentleman by the grace of God and his own 
efforts is the bravest kind of a gentleman;” and Jack’s 
mellow whistle piped : 

“ ‘The rank is but the guinea’s stamp, 

A man’s a man for a’ that.’ ” 

And that was one of the lines on which Polly’s 
education was carried forward. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


POLLY'S INSTRUCTORS. 


^HERE were several of them, and very few girls 
or boys could point to such a faculty. First 
came Elizabeth, and she taught her sewing (which she 
hated) and reading (in which she revelled), together 
with “ pot-hooks and hangers,” a little geography, and 
as much grammar as she could stand — the quantity, 
however, was limited. , 

Jack taught her a little general history, to be sure, 
but everything she could understand about her own 
country ; and as every great movement in its history 
from the earliest Colonial days had been helped for- 
ward by some of his or Elizabeth’s ancestors or both. 


68 


POLLY'S INSTRUCTORS, 


this became a delightful recreation for Polly. Then 
he taught her mathematics, natural history, and chem- 
istry — as much, that is, as was healthful for a child of 
her age to know ; and royal times they had over the 
object-lessons in nuts, apples, pet animals, and toys, 
and many an explosion did their experiments re- 
sult in. 

Mammy Margaret taught her cooking ; and if one 
would learn how much a child can accomplish in that 
line, he should just have tasted one of Polly’s ginger- 
cakes. Incidentally she taught her dozens of the 
plaintive ballads of her native land, and much lore of 
the saints and “ the good people.” 

Texas Dick taught her the Cossack drill, as stated, 
and how to throw a lasso. 

Angus MacPherson, the head shepherd, taught her 
much about the manners and customs of the wool- 
bearers, the habits and virtues of all dogs, but espe- 
cially Scotch collies, and the history of Prince Charlie. 
His forebears had been out with Chief Cluny for him 
in the ’45 ; and on one memorable occasion (it was 
Hogmanay night) the old fellow had brought out 
two rusty claymores and, dressed in his kilts, had 
danced an unforgetable sword-dance to the music of 
the pipes played by a discharged piper going “home ” 
from Manitoba by way of the States. 

Dakota Dick taught her how to shoot. 

Jack was vexed by this at first, but after a talk with 
Polly, short and to the point, he took that branch in 
hand himself and perfected it. The talk was : 

“ Polly, you must promise me one thing, else you 
shall never touch a gun again as long as you live.” 

“Yes, sir,” said Polly, ready to promise anything 
for the sake of the fascinating new amusement. 


POLLY'S INSTRUCTORS. 


69 


“ Well, then, you’ve got to promise on your word of 
honor as a lady — mind, your of honor as a lady 

— that you will not shoot yourself or anybody else 
with a gun that isn’t loaded.” 

“ Aw, daddy,” she said, laughing, “ what a fellow 
you are to joke ! ” 

“ No, madam,” he said, “ I’m not joking. I’m 
like Mr. Jerry Cruncher, a personage you will know 
later — ‘ far be it from me.’ I’m as serious as a lame 
buffalo, and I want you to remember what I am say- 
ing. Almost everybody shot outside of a battle or a 
murder is killed by being at the muzzle end of a gun 
when some fool picks it up and says it isn’t loaded, 
then by way of proving it blazes away and drives a 
bullet or a pound of buckshot through the fellow in 
front of him. Now you’ve got to promise you will 
never pick up a gun and snap the hammer at any- 
body unless you’ve cleaned that gun out yourself 
one minute before and have held on to it ever since.” 

Which Polly promised. 

Then dear among her instructors was an old Pole 
who, having fought gallantly in the Union army, had 
drifted to the Northwest, where his small pension and 
moderate needs had made living possible. His French 
was exquisite, and this he faithfully tried to grind 
into his small pupil’s head, and indeed she did well 
for a child ; but the lessons that she learned quickest 
and never forgot were the wonderful stories he told 
her of the Commonwealth in the days of her pride, 
when she stood the bulwark of civilization, and the 
power of the Turk was shattered on the breastplates 
and swords of her matchless dragoons. 

Then there was Wah-hah-te-nu-tah, and really her 
teachings were invaluable ; for she taught Polly how 


70 


POLLY'S INS TR UCTORS, 


to distinguish one herb from another, to separate the 
useful from the useless, the poison from the good ; 
and how to bruise leaves and make up doses that 
many a doctor would have been glad to know — and 
his patients gladder to have him use. She said : 

“ The Great Spirit put His children here, and He 
put the game for them and the land for them ; and 
the white men came and drove the game and took 
the land ; but the Great Spirit hid in the ground the 
herbs and roots, and the white men cannot see.” 
Here she put back her head, shut her eyes, and opened 
her mouth in a long noiseless laugh. “ They send for 
their medicine-man, they pay, pay, pay, and don’t 
know they walk on the things to make them well for 
nothing. White men very wise.” 

And Little Elk, whose head she had punched, 
taught her to set snares, find and blind a trail, and to 
run without losing her breath ; for, being the smartest, 
sauciest urchin in the band, he had a profound admira- 
tion for anybody who could get the better of him, and 
Polly had cleverly tripped him the day of the fight 
and so won in spite of his seniority. He would have 
taught her wrestling too, as the spring opened, but 
Elizabeth naturally drew the line there, and was only 
mildly surprised a few days later when she found 
Polly mounted on a table in the hall, with her father 
opposite, learning to thrust and parry at single-stick. 

With the coming of the warm weather, after 
Wounded Knee, Polly’s band had moved from Severn 
Reach, except a few who asked for and obtained em- 
ployment ; a half-dozen children whose parents 
begged Jack and Elizabeth to have them sent to 
Father Stefan and the Sisters ; and one old man who 
said : 


POLL y'S INS TP UCTORS. 7 1 

“ I serve the strongest medicine, so I follow the 
gift of Marquette.” 

He constituted himself Polly’s body-guard ; and 
when she made mud-pies, or took her dolls for an 
airing, or harnessed up the ducks and drove them five 
abreast in a squawking battalion through the garden, 
it was a curious sight to see old “ Wicketty Wiz ” — 
the nearest approach to his name of which I am 
capable — sitting like a graven image near her, or 
stalking like a shadow out of Cooper behind her ; his 
eyes as unwinking as those of a Moqui god, his face 
as expressionless as a fig. He was a peculiarly silent 
old man even for an Indian, and rarely opened his 
mouth except to put food or tobacco into it ; but he 
had one weakness — sugar, and Polly, finding it out, 
used to beg a handful every morning from her mother 
and dole it out a lump at a time. 

Now whether this won his queer old heart, or 
whether his idea of serving was broader than other 
people’s, he began at the close of the second summer 
to come and sit on the bottom step of the veranda 
at the hour when Elizabeth was tending the flowers 
that in baskets, jardinieres, and tubs made it a bower 
of richness and perfume. He would fix his beady 
eyes, which were as bright as an eagle’s, on her face 
and never glance to right or left as long as she was 
there. It made her so nervous at last that she spoke 
to Jack about it. 

“ He’s just like the Ancient Mariner, Jack. He fixes 
me ‘ with a glittering eye,’ until I feel like the ‘ wed- 
ding-guest who beat his breast at the sound of the 
loud bassoon.’ I know he’s got something disagree- 
able to tell me, and it gives me the creeps to think 
about it.” 


POLLY'S iNSTRUCrORS, 


72 


“ Shall I speak to him, darling, and tell him to clear 
out? ” 

“ Oh, no,” she answered quickly. “ I’m ashamed to 
feel as I do, and maybe the poor old fellow wants to 
ask a favor.” 

“ He’s come to the right shop, then,” laughed Jack. 
“ Ah, my little Bess, if you could have your way there 
wouldn’t be any ‘ sick-or-sorries,’ as Polly calls them, 
in the country.” 

And next day, having reproached herself very 
severely, Elizabeth went down the three broad steps 
of the veranda and, turning to the old Indian, asked 
in her lovely voice if he wanted anything she could 
do for him. 

He shook his head. 

“ Is there anything you want Mr. Worthington to 
do?” 

Again he shook his head. 

“ Is there something you’d like to say ? ” 

This time he nodded. 

“What is it?” 

But although he looked at her fixedly, the words did 
not come, and he chewed and chewed at the half-plug 
of tobacco that seemed always — never more, never 
less — to fill his mouth. 

“ What is it ? ” she repeated with a look and tone 
that would have made a dumb man try to tell her. 

“ Little Medicine-woman,” he said at length. 

“ Yes?” 

“ Little Medicine-woman,” he repeated. 

“ Yes, what about her ? ” 

“ Watch.” 

“ Watch what ? ” 

“ Little Medicine-woman.” 


POLLY'S INSTRUCTORS. 


n 


“What do you mean, Wicketty Wiz ?” asked Eliz- 
abeth, now thoroughly startled. “ Try to tell me, 
won’t you ? for I don’t understand.” 

The old man chewed again in silence and finally, 
distilling the words one by one out of the slow cur- 
rent of his thoughts, he said: 

“ She has seen the snows nine times. Now she got 
all good body. But when the next snow goes, she get 
a fire in her bones that will burn up her breath. I go 
this snow on the long trail ” (die). “ I ride like a chief 
on the pony she gave me, and I tell you to-day put 
out that fire or she will go to — to — Marquette.” 

A pang shot through Elizabeth’s heart so keen she 
had to sit down. What was it old Winona had said 
the very day Polly was born ? She bent her head on 
her knees, and the tears streamed down her face. 
Through them she saw the faces of her three bonnie 
babies slipping away home to God; but when she 
came to Polly’s she cried: “ I cannot, I cannot T' And 
looking around she saw no one, for the old man had 
disappeared. Running to the stables, she sent one of 
the men for Jack with such evidences of agitation 
and distress that two more threw themselves on their 
horses as soon as she left them and started in oppo- 
site directions so as to miss no chance of finding 
him. 

Startled by what they told him. Jack came tearing 
home as fast as Hassan Bey could bring him, and 
found her lying in her room face down and hardly 
capable of telling him her grief. 

“But, honey,” said Jack, “suppose they both do 
say so ? YouVe taught me to believe that it’s only 
God that can settle these questions of life and death. 
Is — is — anything the matter with the little Major-Gen- 


74 


POLL Y * ^ INS TR UCTORS. 


eral ? Does she seem to be drooping or ailing? She 
was as right as a trivet this morning.” 

“ No, she’s the picture of health. But oh, Jack, 
these people are so strange and so wise with all their 
ignorance. They feel things long before they see 
them, and they see them long before we dream of 
them. Old Winona was on the edge of the grave, and 
Wicketty Wiz has his face turned to what he calls the 
long trail, and you know, dear, people so near the 
other world have strange knowledge. Oh ! what shall 
I do, what shall I do ? ” 

“Why, darling,” he answered, “do what you always 
do — keep up your courage, get ready for the bad day; 
but wait till it comes — don’t go to meet it. I’ll send 
up to the fort for the doctor to come down, and if 
you like I’ll have some of the big guns up from Chi- 
cago or St. Louis to see if there’s anything wrong 
with her.” 

“ We’ll see,” she answered. “ You’re right, as usual, 
dear; we’ll do the best we can: watch carefully, and 
then trust in God for the rest. But oh. Jack, pray, 
let’s both pray that God won’t put this trial on us, 
that Re’ll spare us our one ewe lamb,” and she crept 
into his faithful arms to have her cry out, when, ringing 
like a silver flute or a slangily inclined bluebird, came 
floating up: 

“I had a dream the yuther night, 

When everythi-i-ing was still ; 

I dreamt I saw Susannah 

Come a-tumblin’ down de hill. 

A buckwheat cake was in her mouf, 

A tear was i-i-in her eye ; 

I says to her : ‘ Susannah, O 
Susannah, dori’t you cry ! ’ 


POLL V'S INSTRUCTORS. 


75 


“ ‘ O Susannah, don’t you cry for me ; 

I’ll sing for you, I’ll play for you 
Wid de banjo on my knee.’ 

“ Aw, mam-ma, aw, pa-pa, where you all at ? (Yes, 
she said just that.) 

Jack laughed, and as he did so he felt as if a tight 
cord had loosened from round his heart, and he said, 
patting Elizabeth briskly on the back: 

“ There, there, honey, that sounds pretty well and 
cheerful, doesn’t it ? And just look at her, God bless 
her ! ” 

She stood under the window, her hat pushed back 
on her curly pow, her cheeks glowing, her white teeth 
showing through her bright lips in a cheerful smile, 
every line of her figure instinct with life, energy, and 
childish strength. As she saw them she shouted : 

Can I take out the panther-cub for a walk ? He’s 
whining and rolling round the cage just wearying for a 
ramble-scramble.’’ 

This time Elizabeth laughed : 

“ I believe I aifi foolish. Jack. Maybe Winona 
meant the hard winters, and maybe Wicketty Wiz is so 
cld he doesn’t mean anything. Are you going to let 
her take the cub out ? ” 

“ Yes, if she won’t go far with it; for she has raised 
it ‘ by hand ’ — but a good deal more kindly than poor 
Pip was raised — and it is gentle enough with her, 
though it spits like a tea-kettle when anybody else 
comes near it. Polly, hold on a minute; don’t you 
want a bundle of catnip for your kit ?” 

“ Yes, indeedy,” cheerfully bawled Polly, and she 
clapped her hands and danced, for she well knew the 
pranks the cub would indulge in the minute it smelt 
the fascinating herb, against which even the lions and 


76 POLLY'S INSTRUCTORS. 

tigers of the Zoo are not proof. It seems to go to 
their heads, and these great giants of' the cat tribe be- 
have like the gayest kittens of our acquaintance. 

Jack looked up Wicketty Wiz next day and asked 
the old fellow some kind questions about himself, and 
then said: 

“ Would you like to have the sweat-baths ? I’ll send 
you up to the geyser country if you want to go, and 
the medicine-men will put you through ; ” for he knew 
the wonderfully simple and effective treatment the 
Northwestern Indians give their sick with the help of 
the natural boiling springs, hot mud, and heated stones. 

“ No,” said the old man; “when the ashes of a fire 
cover live coals you can kindle it up again with new 
wood; but when the fire dies here ” — he laid his hand 
on his heart — “the ashes settle, settle, till all the wood 
in the world would not make a spark.” 

“ What makes you think my little girl is not well ? ” 

“ Little Medicine-woman is well.” 

“ But you told my wife ” 

“ The White Lily.” 

“ That she would take a fever next grass.” 

The old man nodded. 

“ Why did you say so ? ” 

“ She will.” 

“ How do you know ? ” 

But the old man looked at him impassively. “ I 
know,” he answered. 

And after that Jack had him moved into one of the 
office-rooms, and charged Margaret to look after him, 
telling her what he had said ; and she, induced by 
Polly’s interest and affection for the old man, did 
many a kind act for him during those last months of 
his life. 


POLLY'S LNSTRUCTORS. 


77 


For it was as he said: the fire was dying at the 
heart. And as he slipped the heel-rope of his soul he 
seemed to grow fonder of the bright-haired child, who 
came and went through the snows and wind, or the 
frost and shine, every day to see him. 

One day she asked him: 

“ Haven’t you any little girls of your own ?’* 

He shook his head. 

“ Nor little boys ? ” 

Again he shook his head. 

“ Nor any papa and mamma? ** 

Again a shaken no. 

“ Nor any, anybody ? ” 

Once more he motioned no. 

“ Where are they all ? ” 

“ Cheyenne kill. Scalp old people, brain babies and 
cut off their hands — whole bagful.” 

“ Oh! ” gasped Polly. “ What did you do ?” 

“ Kill Cheyenne ” — with a savage snarl like an old 
wolf. “ Put bag round neck — big medicine, big fight, 
much scalp, good ! Two Bears big chief one time.” 

“Who’s he?” 

“ Old chief I go with before I come to Grizzly Bear’s 
village.” This was the band that had sheltered at Sev- 
ern Reach. 

“ Did you like him ? ” 

He nodded. 

“ Why did you leave him ? ” 

“ He get whipped in battle. Big medicine-man 
leave him. I follow.” 

“ But why ? ” 

“ Medicine-man have great medicine. Medicine- 
man tell Two Bears not to fight that fight. I serve the 
strongest medicine.” 


POLLY'S INSTRUCTORS. 


78 


“ That’s like St. Christopher,” said Polly, staring 
into the fire — “just like St. Christopher,” she re- 
peated. “ Did you know about him ? ” 

He shook his head. 

“ Well,” said Polly, “ I’ll tell you. He was a great 
soldier — I think he was, for he went from one place 
to another to enlist; but he made up his mind he’d 
only serve the strongest chief of all.” 

Here Wicketty’s eyes gave a gleam of interest, 

“ And so he had to keep on going, for as fast as his 
chief got whipped in battle he’d have to leave him and 
serve the one that whipped him ; and he went from 
chief to chief and king to king till they all got whipped 
some time or other, and then one day he met the 
devil. You know about the devil?” 

Wicketty nodded. 

“ Well, you know he’s the strongest bad thing in the 
whole world, and for a long time St. Christopher — but 
he wasn’t a saint yet — thought he’d found the strongest 
of all; but one day they two were walking along the road 
together, and the first thing he knew there was the devil 
shaking and shivering and tumbling down on the 
ground, he was so scared. St. Christopher stopped 
and looked at him, and said: ‘ Look here: you told 
me you were the strongest in the whole world. What’s 
the matter with you ? What you afraid of ? ’ And 
the devil said: ‘ That ! ’ and he pointed to a little 
cross set up on the side of the road. And St. Chris- 
topher said: ^ You’re a coward, and you’ve told me 
a lie, too, and I won’t stay with you.’ And he went 
away by himself to find out why that little cross was 
stronger than the devil. And he went, and. he went, 
and he didn’t find out. And presently he came to a 
river, and it was so wide and so deep that people 


POLLY'S INSTRUCTORS. 


79 


couldn’t get across. And he took up a claim and 
settled there, and carried the people over; for 
he was big as a giant and he liked fighting with 
the river, and he was sorry for the people that 
couldn’t. 

“ So one night there was an awful storm, a kind of 
blizzard, I reckon — no, not a blizzard, ’cause Mammy 
Margaret said rain instead of snow. Well, there was 
an awful storm, and once when the wind stopped St. 
Christopher heard a little child crying and then he 
went right out and hunted and hallooed till he found 
a poor little thing all wet and most dead, and he said: 
‘ Come home with me, honey, and get dry and warm 
and something to eat.’ You see he thought it was 
lost, and he felt mighty sorry for it. But the little boy 
— it was a little boy — said no, he had to get across 
the creek that night, he just had to. So St. Christo- 
pher took him up on his shoulder and started across. 
Well, he had a dreadful time, for the water ran so 
fast and the little child got so heavy that he began 
to sink, and he got heavier and heavier till St. Chris- 
topher could just keep their two heads up and get 
to the other side. And when he sat the little child 
down he said : ‘ See here : what makes you so awful 
heavy ? You’re little, but I never carried such a load 
before. I wonder is the world much heavier. And 
the little child began to shine like the sun and said: 
‘ Christopher, you’ve carried more than the world, 
for you have carried its Creator.’ And then He told 
him He was Our Lord and had died on the cross for 
him. Then Christopher knew he had found the 
strongest, for God is the strongest of every all, and he 
served Him all his life.” 

Margaret had hung a small crucifix in the room the 


8o 


POLLY'S INSTRUCTORS, 


day before, and, pointing to it, Wicketty asked: “ That 
medicine stronger than the gift of Marquette ? ” 

And Polly, turning to Margaret, said : 

“ You tell him, mammy.” 

“ Old man,” said Margaret, solemnly, “ Marquette — 
God be good to him! — was a faithful servant of God, 
and may he give us his prayers ; but the One that 
stands for made the world and everything in it, and 
is the Master of all of us. He loved us so well He 
died to save us, and waits to-day in heaven for all of 
us that want to come there.” 

“ I am a man. I serve the strongest medicine,” said 
the old Indian. 

And a few weeks later, when the sun came shoulder- 
ing up the Line, Margaret baptized him, and he rode 
on the long trail, not as a chief’s ghost on the ghost of 
a sacrificed pony, but as a clean white soul that 
would serve its Lord through the glorious aeons of 
eternity. 

Then as the days lengthened Polly began to droop, 
and Elizabeth’s frantic fear not only summoned 
doctors by the half-dozen, but renewed her dismayed 
memory of Winona’s prophecy and Wicketty Wiz’s 
warning. It also quickened into life her remembrance 
of the package of herbs Winona had given her with 
the medal of Marquette ; and when the last of the 
specialists had departed with some general phrase 
about the warm weather and lack of vitality and a 
prescription for a tonic (the eighth or tenth), she sat 
looking at her child in dumb dismay. 

Such a pathetic little Polly — so white, so languid, 
her heavy lids drooping over her eyes, her dimples 
gone, her little mouth half open, and the breath flut- 
tering in her throat. 


POLLY'S INSTRUCTORS. 


8l 


Suddenly Elizabeth started as if shot, and Jack, 
who was sitting in the hall, stretched out his hand to 
catch her as she ran by. 

“ What -s the matter, dearest ? ” he cried. 

“ Wait,”she said. “ Wait right there. Jack.” 

And she ran on to a small storeroom, where, after 
some searching, she found the birch-bark parcel of the 
old squaw. She called Margaret, and in a few minutes 
she had boiling water and was brewing a strong tea 
from the herbs in it. 

A smell, penetrating, balsamic, and not disagreeable, 
rose from it, and she carried a wine-glass of it to 
Polly as soon as it cooled ; for as she had sat looking 
at her, she had seen blue shadows under her eyes, 
and the old squaw’s words, “ When the frost nips 
there,” came back like arrows. 

“ Take this, darling,” she said, and Polly swallowed 
it almost mechanically. Another and another dose 
followed, and at the end of a few hours she fell asleep. 
Little beads began to gather on her forehead and 
upper lip and chin, and she did not wake up till mid- 
night ; then she took a glass of warm milk, and slept 
again till the young day looked in to see what had 
become of his little playfellow. 

Now whether Polly had caught some Indian ail- 
ment that Indian remedies alone could cure, or 
whether the cessation of draughts and pills gave 
Nature a chance, or whether the old squaw living close 
to the heart of the earth had learned its secrets, I 
cannot say ; but from that day she began to revive, 
and although it was a slow recovery it was sure, and the 
next year saw Polly almost her old self; but Elizabeth 
had gone down under the shock, and for two weary 
years divided her time between her bed and her couch. 


82 


GLEN MARY. 


The year after her illness Polly was more than her 
old self, and, because they feared some return of it, 
she ran almost as wild as the colts at the Upper 
Ranch, in accordance with old Winona’s advice; and 
this was the reason that in her twelfth year, with a 
perfect physique, bright, intelligent mind, an affec- 
tionate, generous nature, upright and honorable as 
Jack’s own self, Polly yet had grown to a point where 
Elizabeth constantly — Jack spasmodically — wondered 
what should ever be done to tame and tone her down 
without injuring her health, or bruising her joyous 
nature, or breaking instead of training her will. 

As yet her love for her parents proved a strong con- 
trolling power, but as they themselves slipped more 
and more under her dominating influence the problem 
was a very serious one. 


CHAPTER IX. 


GLEN MARY. 


^^LEN MARY stood on the brow of a commanding 
hill, and was a place well worth visiting and 
studying. 

It had been a fort during the war, and was the 
largest 'and most imposing of a cordon that formed the 
“ city defences.” In the third year, however, its gar- 
rison was withdrawn for the grimmer needs of the 
front, and two years later it was abandoned and dis- 
mantled. Then it lay there another two years and the 
herbage crept up over the slope, and after the herbage 
came the cattle ; and it had become a safe and ac- 
cepted grazing-ground to the lazy cowherds, who slept 
in the sallyport and let their charges wander at will 


GLElSt MARY. 


§3 

within the enclosure, when one day a brisk little lady 
appeared on the scene in a spotless habit and goffered 
cap, and explored it from rifle-pit to flag-staff, from 
rampart to powder-magazine. Then she went away 
again, and in a few weeks the countryside was shaken 
by a report that the Roman Catholics had bought the 
old fort and were going to build a nunnery there. 

And they did, but after a fashion that set tongues 
wagging for months. 

In the first place Mother Ottilia, as the brisk little 
lady in the spotless habit was named, had an original 
way of doing any and every thing she undertook, and 
she took such odd ways sometimes that the lookers-on 
held their breath ; but her Superior, who had known 
her for a lifetime, always said : 

“ It will be done, and done well. I do not know 
how or when, but our dear Lord has given Ottilia the 
power of bringing people to her way of thinking and 
seeing, and money flows in to float her plans almost 
before they are formulated. She would have been 
Superior long ago but for her obstinate humility, which 
could be conquered for her present promotion only by 

an order to establish a branch house at , and the 

fact that there wasn’t a dollar in the bourse with 
which to do it.” 

Before making her contracts she studied her ground 
and resources very carefully, and this is what she 
found: At the back of the fort was a glen through 
which danced and chattered a brook so pure and so 
abundant that it had furnished an ample supply to the 
garrison and all its thousand troop-horses. Beyond 
rose another hill heavily wooded, which sloped north- 
ward to a placid meadow bordering the brook, and to 
the southward made a bold drop that corresponded 


84 


GLEN MARV. 


to the other shore and formed a natural basin some 
forty feet deep, where the brook rested from its toil- 
some journey down. 

There,” she said, “ is my timber, there my water- 
supply, a grazing-field for a few cows, and good ground 
when a clearing is made for raising vegetables and a 
fair crop of corn and wheat. Now what I have to get 
is — ” and then followed a list that would have scared 
anybody but Sister Ottilia, for it included everything, 
not excepting the cows themselves and a windmill for 
raising the water into that house that wasn’t yet built ! 

A travelling buzz-saw, the railroad, and persistent 
energy and patience and a perseverance that was good 
enough to go into a copy-book as “a great virtue,” 
soon accomplished wonders. And before the people 
of the neighborhood could realize it the house was 
built, the ivy was already etching bold designs across 
its walls, and the garden was blazing away on the ram- 
parts, for she had turned the broad tops of the ram- 
parts into garden-walks and flower-beds, and the 
smoke of the cannon was replaced by the rosy cloud 
of the crepe-myrtle, and the fiery tongues of the 
muskets by the carnations and nasturtiums. 

A flag-staff was raised where the old one had stood, 
and parked neatly on its velvet mound were three beau- 
tiful brass guns that shone like bright-work aboard ship. 
These last were the loving care of an old pensioner, 
who — but Corporal Justine’s story will come later. 

The raising and lowering of the flag at sunrise and 
sunset was made the great reward of merit to the pupils, 
who seemed to fill the place immediately it was fin- 
ished; while the mending of the flag, as well as its gen- 
eral care, was confided to two of the old Sisters whose 
grandfathers had helped to make its stripes and stars 


GLEN^ MARY. 


35 


possible, the one with the New England contingent, 
the other with Marion’s men ; indeed, he was the 
young soldier who was on duty at the time of the fa- 
mous breakfast of sweet potatoes, which has gone into 
song and story and of which every American child is 
so proud. 

As the years went by improvements and additions 
were made until now the house stood three stories 
high, its lines running parallel with those of the ram- 
parts which at sides and back formed part of its foun- 
dations and walls; the kitchen, refectories, bath-rooms, 
and gymnasium were on the first floor ; class-rooms, 
practice-rooms, study-hall, and playroom on the sec- 
ond — the last two occupying each a whole side of the 
building ; and the dormitories were on the third floor. 
But there was no courtyard in the middle, that space 
being the music-hall, where the commencements were 
held. It was two stories in the clear, and its roof was 
of glass with a large number of ventilators and a row 
of electric lights running around the top like a frieze. 
This left the dormitories with windows on both sides, so 
that sunlight and fresh air bathed the pretty white-cur- 
tained spaces from morning to night. A small com- 
munity-house was united with the main building by 
the chapel, which in turn was connected with the 
study-hall by a passage of its own width in which 
hung the shawls and bags containing the veils and 
prayer-books of the girls. 

Beneath the community-house were the supplies- 
cellars, and beyond to northward were the barn, 
wagon-sheds, and stables; for not only cows but 
horses and vehicles were added to their store, and 
Mother Ottilia’s every plan was a working reality. 

Between this point and the bottom of the glen there 


86 


gl£:n- Mary. 


was only the stretch of soft moss, gray rock, and dower- 
shot turf that led to the brook. A sparse grove of 
trees, that had been the picket-line of the old growth 
beyond the water, gave shade and beauty, and I 
honestly believe there are few places in the world 
where a child could be as happy as in that glen. 

The brook did all the things a well-educated brook 
should do — taking Tennyson’s as a criterion — and 
Florida Boutelle, of the senior class, used to say: 
“ If it was abroad, artists would cross the sea to 
sketch it, and tourists would rave about it ; ” and 
allowing for a certain amount of enthusiasm, she was 
not so far away from fact, for its rocky bed was a 
succession of steps, slides, and wide shallows, with 
streaks of soft sand and fuller’s earth, that fretted the 
water into ripples and rapids or soothed it into baby 
mill-ponds and crystal chutes until it reached the point 
of the sheer drop, and there the stream with one leap 
plunged into the basin already mentioned. 

This last afforded such excellent facilities for 
drowning that a danger-line was built across stream — 
a picket-fence eight feet high, painted such a vivid 
red that Bertha Bockstein was simply corrected when 
she called it “ a screeching, roaring red.” But every 
other part of the creek was open to the children in 
play-hours, subject, of course, to moderate restrictions 
as to wet feet, wading, not tumbling into the shallows 
7?iore than three times a day, etc., etc., which varied 
with seasons and circumstances. The one order that 
never varied was about Deep Pool, or “ Dead Man’s 
Pool,” for the gruesome story with which the girls 
scared each new-comer and themselves was only too 
well founded. 

Mother Ottilia’s methods of teaching were as 


(;len- maev. 


B; 

bnginal as her business inspirations, and prospered as 
bravely; so that as the years went by the school in- 
creased and grew in fame until its name was known 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to 
Mexico. 

And it came to pass on a crisp, beautiful afternoon 
in the very last days of September, ’94, that Jack and 
Polly got out at the entrance to the sallyport and ad- 
dressed themselves to an exhaustive examination of 
their surroundings. 

For it had been decided, after long deliberation and 
many inquiries, that she was to go to boarding-school; 
and the wife of the commandant at the fort, with 
grateful memories of the old Visitation Convent in 
Georgetown, strongly urged it upon Elizabeth’s atten- 
tion; and she, with equally pleasant memories of Mt. 
de Sales, in their own Maryland, had readily fallen in 
with the idea of a convent school, and Mother 
Ottilia’s plan of education so commended itself to her 
that Glen Mary was the place of her choice. 

There had been weeping and wailing at Severn 
Reach when the decision was made known, but Eliza- 
beth’s gentle “ It is better for the child,” even while 
the tears rolled over her face at the thought of part- 
ing, silenced all objection. 

The loudest protesters were Texas Dick and his 
chum, Dakota Dick. “ There ain’t any sense in it,” 
they said; “the Major-General knows a heap more 
than most girls now, and full as much as most parsons; 
and to shut a gay little filly like that up in some stuffy 
hole of a town-school is a shame;” and then and there 
they used words that were neither pretty nor proper, 
adjectives that snapped like revolvers in a street-fight. 

But the sight of Elizabeth’s face silenced them too, 


88 


POLLY^S INTRODUCTIOIY. 


and they meekly presented their gifts — a hair lariat of 
many colors (the kind the vaqueros in Mexico lay 
around them in the desert places at night to keep off the 
snakes) and the lightest weight, handsomest rifle that 
could be found for love or money. Old MacPherson 
brought her two silver collie-pups; and indeed for a 
week there was a procession of gift-bringers, each laden 
with what he or she considered most precious, and the 
collection that resulted would have puzzled even 
Mother Ottilia to dispose of. 

Wang’s present was a gilded joss with closed eyes, 
broad smile, a Santa Claus paunch, and a pair of 
tucked-up legs that would have made a tailor die of 
envy; and with it he gave a bunch of large joss- 
sticks, one of which was to be burnt every day to in- 
sure a safe journey ! 

CHAPTER X. 

POLLY'S INTRODUCTION. 

the blazing ribbon of the flower-beds unrolled 
its length before them a look of pleasure bright- 
ened both faces. As they crossed the campus and 
saw the flag. Jack lifted his hat and Polly waved her 
hand in salutation, and at the sight of the guns both 
paused, interested and surprised. But when they 
mounted the wide steps and entered the reception- 
room, Polly’s heart dropped like lead at the sight of 
the grating. 

“Oh, Jack,” she gasped, “will they put me behind 
that and never let me out ? ” 

Jack himself felt very uncomfortable about it, but 
he answered cheerfully : 

“ What you talking about, honey ? Do you suppose 


POLLV'S mpRODVCTlOl^. 89 

they have all that place out yonder for show? ” and 
he waved his hand towards flowers and green. 

And then there glided into sight two figures at 
sight of which he rose and bowed in his stateliest 
manner. Polly rose too, and, suddenly feeling very 
little, very young, and oh, so far from home ! slipped 
her hand into his, and, with her heart beating in 
great sick thumps, waited for what she scarcely 
knew. 

A voice sweet but decided, gentle but strong, said : 

“ Mr. Worthington, I am very glad to meet you. I 
am Mother Ottilia ; this is Sister Constance, the Di- 
rectress. We are going to take the very best care of 
your little girl, and we are going to try to make her 
fond of her duties and happy in her pleasures.” 

Jack made another stately bow, and introduced 
Polly, who put out her hand instinctively, but brought 
up against the grating, and drew back with a look of 
unmistakable repugnance and distaste. 

‘‘ This way, my dear,” and a hand not unlike a bit 
of ivory was put through the grating. “You don’t 
feel as badly as I did the first time I ever saw one of 
these.” And an amused smile flitted across Mother’s 
face, that caused Polly to respond to both touch and 
look. “ Draw your chair up, and, while Sister Con- 
stance'and your papa are talking business. I’ll tell you 
about it. I was a little girl that ought to have been a 
little boy — at least so my uncle and guardian thought, 
and he was so vexed he would not have anything to 
do with me. He sent me up to the Black Forest with 
my foster-mother, and then seemed to forget all 
about me till I was ten years old. Then one day, 
when I was up a high tree trying to get a raven’s nest, 
my foster-mother came rushing through the woods, 


90 


POLLY*S INTRODUCtldJY. 


calling me at the top of her voice, and snatching at 
her hair as though she were trying to pull off a wig. 
I should have stayed hid there, and should have gone 
on laughing, but I caught a glimpse of her face, and 
she looked so frightened I called out, slid down 
the tree, and ran to her. She was whimpering and cry- 
ing great tears, and, while she was trying to pull my 
clothes straight and smooth my hair, she told me my 
uncle was up at the forester’s house waiting to see me, 
and then she cried and talked so together I couldn’t 
understand anything she was saying. 

“ ‘ Well, and what’s to do ? ’ I asked very stiffly, for 
she had unwisely told me of my uncle’s disappoint- 
ment, and I had never forgotten it. She opened her 
mouth, and, after staring at me, muttered : ‘ Here’s 

pepper for you! As like as two cabbages ! ’ Then fol- 
lowed me back, muttering and shaking her head. 

“ In front of the hut stood a tall, large man in a 
brilliant uniform. His fierce gray mustache was like 
a brush, and he called out in a loud, commanding 
voice : 

“ ‘ Is that the way for a gnadiges Frdulein to ap- 
pear ? ’ 

“ I had made up my mind to be naughty. If he 
asked me yes. I’d answer no, as the saying is; so I be- 
gan by calling back in as nearly the same voice and 
manner as I could manage : 

“ ‘ Yes, it is.’ 

“At this he looked surprised, and then, instead of 
scolding me as he should have done, he began to 
laugh, sat down, drew me to his side, and began to ask 
questions. Now, the woods I loved better than the 
house, and, inste-ad of learning how to sew my seam 
and read my alpha-beta book, I had followed the for- 


POLLY'S LNTRODUCTION. 


91 


ester, had learned how to shoot hares and to know the 
trees, herbs, and plants as well as he did. So when he 
finished his questions my uncle clapped his hands on 
his knees, rubbed them, and laughed loud and unre- 
strainedly. 

“ ‘ Nearly as good as a boy. Ha, ha ! How I wish 
I could clap thee into a gymnasium, and then into the 
army! But, as I can’t do that, what shall I do with 
thee ? ’ 

“ ‘ Leave me here,’ I answered boldly. 

“‘No; Ermentrude said it was my duty. Ermen- 
trude said I had neglected it; and as Ermentrude is 
always right, and as old Karl never neglected duty 
since he wore his first sword, why — ’ Then he 
looked like a man who had seen a very bright light, 
and he almost shouted: ‘I’ll take thee to Ermen- 
trude and let her tell me herself what to do with 
thee.’ 

“ I was very naughty. I would not even ask who 
Ermentrude was, although I was burning with curi- 
osity. 

“ Some time I will tell you about that journey,” 
said Mother in answer to Polly’s look of sympathy 
and amusement, “ but the end of it all was that I was 
taken to a great stone building which, because I was 
too proud to ask about it, I thought was a jail. We 
went into the parlor, which had stone floors and an 
iron grating, for it was a convent five hundred years 
old; and when a tall figure appeared behind that 
grille, covered from head to foot with a black veil and 
not making a sound, I threw myself on the floor, and 
shrieked and howled and fought and scratched until 
my uncle was beside himself and the nuns were 
scared in their cells. 


92 


POLLY'S INTRODUCTION. 


“ I had got hold of a stool and was banging my 
uncle’s legs with it as hard as I could ; but they were 
protected by high cavalry-boots, and he stood indiffer- 
ently enough now that I had stopped crying, and I 
heard him say: 

“ ‘ Ermentrude, this battering-ram is my neglected 
duty. This is Hedwiga’s child. What shall I do with 
her? ’ 

“ Then I stopped long enough to look up, and 
behind that grating I saw the loveliest face, thin and 
pale, but sweet as a picture of Our Lady. 

“ ‘ My little child,’ she said, ‘ why are you so fright- 
ened ? ’ 

“ ‘ He’s putting me in prison and I won’t stay,’ I 
answered, pointing to my uncle. And he, instead of 
being angry, began to laugh, and said: ‘Oh, she’s a 
pickle! ’ 

“ But my aunt Ermentrude said: ‘ No. This is the 
Convent of Our Lady of Hochstein, and there are 
many little children here. Will you come to the win- 
dow and see ? ’ 

“ I went, and looked down for the first time into 
a playground full of children — swings, seesaws, lit- 
tle garden-beds, benches full of dolls and little girls* 
other little girls racing, running, walking ; it was 
delightful. 

“ And from that day to this I have never minded 
the grille, for it is only the boundary-line set up be- 
tween the inside and outside of the convent limits. 
Would you like to see what’s behind it ? ” 

“ Yes’m,” said Polly, entirely won. “ If Jack — papa 
can come, too. You see,” she explained, “we’ve got 
such a little time to be together.” 

“ Yes,” said Mother* “ of course he can.” 


POLLY'S INTROD UCTION. 


93 


And he and the two Sisters and Polly started through 
the house, when a vigorous whining and yapping was 
heard. 

“ Oh,” said Polly, “ those are Montrose and Dun- 
dee, my collie-puppies I brought with me. They’ll 
be scratching the paint off the door the next thing,” 
and away she ran. 

“ Will it be at all possible, madam, for her to keep 
them ? We left everything else in the way of live-stock 
behind us, but somehow we couldn’t manage to leave 
these ; it would have broken old MacPherson’s heart, 
and given Polly’s own a bad twinge ; and, as I’m afraid 
she’s going to be very lonesome and homesick, I do 
hope you can manage it.” 

Mother made up her mind then and there. “ We 
couldn’t have them in the house, you know, Mr. Wor- 
thington; because if one child brought her pets, all the 
others must have the right to do the same, and you can 
readily imagine that Glen Mary with a hundred and 
fifty animals and birds of different kinds would strongly 
resemble a Noah’s ark. But if your little daughter will 
trust them to the care of old Cobden, our stableman, 
they can be well cared for, and she can see them now 
and then on the half-holidays.” 

“ Thank you, madam,” said Jack. “ And one 
word: do be good to her. She’s all we’ve got, and 
sending her away from home is like pulling our hearts 
out by the roots.” 

“ I will, Mr. Worthington. To care for these little 
creatures is the duty I have undertaken before God, 
and their minds, their souls, and their bodies are our 
sacred and incessant charge. It’s early to prophesy,” 
she added, with a charming smile,“ but I think she will 
be very popular.” 


94 


POLLY'S INTRODUCTION. 


Just then a scampering of feet shod and padded 
came down the hall, and Polly burst in, rosy from her 
run, and with the dogs more in the air than on the 
ground. They dashed up to Mother, to whom for some 
reason they attached themselves, walking sedately in 
front of her, their plumy tails waving. 

“ Aha ! ” said Jack, “ they are putting on their best 
manners for you, madam.” 

And just then they all came out on the back gallery. 

“ Oh ! ” said Polly. “ Look, Jack, look ! ” 

And she squeezed his hand with delight as the pano- 
rama of the Glen broke on her eyes. 

The equinoctial storms were well over and the mud 
was gone, but the brook still felt the push of the high 
water in its current and was doing all its prettiest 
tricks and pranks. The great trees were putting on 
their war-paint, for two sharp frosts had come down 
on them; the burrs were beginning to open here and 
there, and the red squirrels were darting and chatter- 
ing, and through the grove the children were scattered, 
a perfect fringe of them edging the shores of that 
laughing, tumbling water. 

The chapel Polly thought “pretty,” the dormitories 
“funny,” the big music-hall with its grand pianos, harps, 
and great organ “queer,” the playroom “dandy,” and 
the gardens “jolly.” But when Jack bade her good- 
by the interest went out of everything, and she pitched 
herself into his arms, crying bitterly. 

“There, there. Major-general,” said Jack, “brace 
up, do, that’s a duck ! If I have to go home and tell 
mamma how I left you mourning, she’ll cry herself sick. 
Try, honey, do, for” — here Jack’s voice got husky — 
“ your old daddy’s sake. He — he’d rather do any- 
thing under the sun than go away from you.” 


POLLY'S INTRODUCTION. 95 

Don’t, then,” she whispered. “ Let’s give it up, 
daddy. Let me go liome with you. ’ 

“ Right about face ! That won’t do at all. We’ve 
promised, and we must keep our word if the stars fall, 
old lady.” 

“Yes, sir,” said Polly. 

And after a few more hugs and kisses he turned 
abruptly and left the room, while Polly flung herself 
into the arms Sister Constance held out to her, and 
cried until she could cry no more. 

Sister Constance laid her hand on her head, smooth- 
ing it now and then until the first grief abated, and 
then she said: 

“ My child, it is a great trial leaving home for the 
first time; but it gives you the chance to do some- 
thing for your parents whom you love so.” 

“ I — for Jack and mamma? ” asked Polly, raising her 
wet face and letting the tears roll off the end of her 
nose in her amazement. 

“ Yes. They love you so dearly that they suffer 
very much in parting with you, but they send you 
away where you can get an education such as they 
wish you to have. By cheerfully living your life here, 
by studying hard, by keeping the rules, you are doing 
all you can to help their plan.” 

“I never thought of that. But oh. Sister, if you 
only knew Severn Reach, and mamma, and mammy, 

and Mac, and the lambs, and the co-o-o-lts ” and 

down went her head again, and Sister’s hand resumed 
its gentle soothing motion. 

The sun in her eyes woke Polly ; for she had fallen 
asleep on Sister Constance’s lap, and had no memory 
of how she got to bed : and such a funny little bed — 
white as snow, to be sure, but narrow, plain, and a 


96 


POLLY'S INTRODUCTIOPr. 


great contrast to the little brass nest at home where she 
dreamed her dreams. The place she was in was funny, 
too ; it was no larger than an eighth section of her own 
room, just large enough, in fact, to hold, beside the 
little bed, a plain wash-stand and one chair; the “walls” 
were white curtains, one of which was violently agi- 
tated every now and then as if sometliing which puffed 
very audibly was careering around on the other side. 

The whole place was full of subdued sound — rust- 
lings, movings, splashings, rubbings, and scrubbings, 
but not a word ; and as Polly rose on her elbow to 
look around, the curtain at the foot of the bed was 
lifted, a pleasant face framed in veil and goffered cap 
looked in and said in a low sweet voice : 

“ Blessed be God ! May He bless your day and 
your efforts to please Him! ” Then the Sister flicked 
her fingers towards the bright eyes, and Polly felt two 
or three cool drops on her cheeks. 

“ It’s time to be up,” she added. “ We have let you 
sleep later because you seemed so tired, but now the 
second bell is going to ring, the children are going 
to Mass, and you must get up so as to be ready for 
breakfast.” 

Polly sat up instantly and said : “ Yes, ma’am. 

Where’ll I find my bath-room ? ” 

“ Bath comes after gymnastics. Bathe your face, 
ears, neck, and hands at the wash-stand, and that with 
brushing your hair and teeth, and getting into your 
clothes will fill out the three quarters of an hour very 
fully. Can I help you ? ” 

“ No, ma’am,” said Polly. “ But I’m much obliged 
all the same.” 

Her voice rang out loud and clear, and a subdued 
giggling came from several directions around her. Sis- 


POLLY INTRODUCTION. 


97 


ter Pauline raised her finger to her lips and said in a 
whisper : “ Silence in the dormitory, dear,” and then 
disappeared, not a moment too soon, for the adjoining 
curtain not only shook vigorously this time, but bulged 
and spread, until with a sudden plwnp ! there fell 
into Polly’s section a surprised and surprising little 
girl. She had the reddest possible hair, that stood in 
a tight curling aureola about her head, her round face 
was covered with freckles, her large light blue eyes 
were in the roundest state of surprise, and her snubby 
nose was quite pink. For the rest, she was as fat as a 
little bolster, and there was a general effect of boiling 
over her bands at waist, neck, and boot-tops. 

“ Oh,” she gasped, “ do excuse me ! I’ll tell you 
all about it in recreation. I’m Gwendolen Jubbins.” 

And she scrambled clumsily back, just as the bell 
rang and the girls evidently filed out of the room. 
The house got very quiet, and Polly, after waiting for 
a sight or sound of somebody, started to find her way 
down to the playroom. She of course had no idea 
where to find it, but, as she wisely said : 

“ Every place here leads to some other place ; there 
are no blind trails, and the walls of the corral are too 
high to stray out of.” 

She made one or two wrong turnings and opened 
one or two wrong doors, and at the last one stood 
transfixed like Bluebeard’s wife in the fatal chamber. 
But it was not by anything she saw. Oh no; it was by 
what she heard^ and really it sounded like a cat’s opera 
with Kilkenny for a stage-setting. 

She listened stupefied for a few minutes, and then 
laughed until she felt like dropping on the floor and 
rolling ; for the door opened into a corridor on each 
side of which there were twelve small rooms, and in 


98 


FOLLY'S INTRODUCTION. 


each of those rooms was a piano, and at each of those 
pianos was a girl more or less advanced in music, 
practising with all the vigor of which she was capable. 
Each door was open, so the monitor could observe 
them as she paced upon and down reading her office, 
and there was consequently no softening of the sound. 
Paderewski’s Minuet soared and trilled above the 
thunderous strains of Wagner like a lark above a 
cataract ; Grieg moaned melodiously to the measures 
of Chopin’s Waltz in A minor ; and all were cut into 
ribbons by avalanches of scales that ran major and 
minor from end to end of the keyboard ; and these 
were chopped into bits by five-finger exercises, and the 
whole struggled and roared and thumped until it 
might have been taken for a composer’s nightmare. 

As the monitor came towards her she said “ Good- 
morning,” and told-her very loudly what she was hunt- 
ing for. Sister Anastasia directed her, and then laid 
her finger on her lip and said: “ Silence in the practice- 
hall, my dear.” 

“ Whew ! ” thought Polly, “ I wish you may get it.” 
But all she said was “Yes, ma’am,” and walked away, 
alternately wondering where she might talk and when, 
and laughing at the memory of the pandemonium she 
had ieft, and how Sister Anastasia had been obliged 
to put her lips quite to her ear and to almost shout : 
“ Silence in the practice-hall.” 

A stream of girls poured out of the chapel, and fol- 
lowing them she found herself in the playroom, 
whence, formed in ranks, they marched to the dining- 
room — really marched — to a very spirited piec-e of 
music. This was played by a Sister on a piano which 
stood at the head of the room and which she opened 
and closed, in contrast to the one at the opposite end 


POLLY'S INTRODUCTIOLT, 


99 


which grinned persistently with all its keyboard, as if 
ready at any time for any fun going, although it had 
lost several teeth, chips out of its legs, part of its top 
and several of its strings, for it was the playroom 
piano on which somebody and generally several some- 
bodies played during all the recreation-hours from 
morning till night with fingers, fists, or elbows as the 
fancy took them. 

Breakfast was good, plain, and wholesome. There 
was oatmeal, boiled for hours and put through a sieve. 
It was troublesome, to be sure, but Mother Ottilia 
knew that children’s stomachs are not bolting-mills, 
and the delicious jelly was served with plenty of rich 
milk. There was small hominy for those who were 
so unlucky as not to like the oatmeal ; there were tea, 
coffee, milk, and plenty of pure water ; there was 
Vienna bread, so crusty that everybody could — O bliss- 
ful privilege ! — “ crunch ” at once ; there was good 
butter, and there was plenty of time in which to eat it. 

Silence again made Polly feel as though she had on 
a muzzle ; for, except the request to hand butter or 
bread, there was no conversation allowed, and when 
the signal to rise was made by the monitor, who sat up 
in what looked like a little witness-box, she was sur- 
prised and impressed with the promptness of every- 
body. One girl had the last bit of bread half-way to 
her mouth ; she put it down although it was so richly 
buttered it was evidently a tidbit. Another in the 
same case popped the piece into her mouth, where, as 
it was too large, it caused her much discomfort, be- 
sides which the girls near her in ranks darted such dis- 
pleased looks at her that, between choking and an- 
noyance, the tears started into her eyes and were 
hastened down her cheeks by a fit of coughing. 


100 


POLLY'S INTRODUCTION, 


At the door of the playroom the silence broke into 
as many pieces as there were girls, for it was another 
of Mother Ottilia’s theories that a good sharp play of 
thirty minutes just after breakfast was a good be- 
ginning for studies and other hard morning work. 

The girls sang, hallooed, raced, and danced, and 
Sister Aloysius, taking Polly by the hand, introduced 
her to Elsie Mitchell, just as Gwendolen Jubbinscame 
up and claimed acquaintance. 

“Oh, Elsie, wasn’t it aivful! I was trying to stand 
on my hands like Marie Van Houten told me the Del- 
sarte people do to make them thin. You know,” she 
said, turning to Polly, “my mother is so awfully dis- 
tressed because I haven’t any figure. I don’t really 
care myself, but she feels so awfully about it and cries 
so that I’d do anything to please her. Well, I got up 
on the bed to try it this time, for the last time I tried 
it on the floor I lost my balance and hit the pitcher and 
smashed it, and the water ran up my back, and I had 
to go to the wardrobe, and — and — where was I ? Oh 
yes, I got up on the bed, and the first thing I knew I’d 
rolled right into Polly’s curtain. I hope you didn’t 
mind very much ? ” 

Polly reassured her, and was about to ask something 
more about the exercise, when Elsie’s dainty fingers 
picked up a roll of Gwendolen’s fat arm, and her sil- 
very little voice said : 

“ Gwen, I’ve promised to do it, so look out ! ” 

“ Ow ! ” said Gwendolen in a loud and cheerful, 
roar. 

“Yes,” continued Elsie ; “you promised Sister 
Genevieve to stop saying ‘awful,’ and then you made 
me promise to pinch you every time you forgot. Did 
I hurt you much ? ” 


POLLY'S INTRODUCTION, lOI 

“ No, but I thought you were going to, so I howled 
to be in time.” 

“ What’s the matter, Porpoise ? ” shouted a girl who 
came sliding along the floor, seizing Gwendolen as she 
flew by and nearly throwing that plump young person 
over as she came to anchor. “ Elsie, what are you 
doing to her? You know Jubby and I are twin-souls, 
and who hits her hears me.” 

“ I was mending her ways,” answered Elsie, with a 
soft, pretty smile that lent a fresh charm to her really 
spirituelle face. “But, Jinsie, here’s the new pupil, 
Polly Worthington ; and Polly, this dear old thing is 
Jinsie Jameson, one of the nicest girls I know.” 

“ Howdy,” said Jinsie, giving Polly a hearty shake of 
the hand. “ Don’t you be taken in by that bit of Dres- 
den china. I’m a pickle or a pepper according to the 
way I feel, but she’s a duck,” giving an affectionate 
smack to the top of Elsie’s smooth head ; for it was a 
curious fact that dainty, sedate Elsie was the chosen 
and loving friend of the dullest and the smartest girls 
of her own age at Glen Mary, and “The Triangle,” as 
they were called, had never fallen out with each other, 
although frequently differing in opinion, since their first 
meeting the year they were all “ new girls ” and began 
their acquaintance by the two fishing Gwendolen out 
of the brook, where she lay on her back in one of the 
shallows roaring, having tried to follow Jinsie in one of 
her flying leaps. 

Jinsie was as spare as Gwendolen was fat, and was 
like a bundle of wires, never still a moment ; in and 
out of a dozen “ scraps ” and scrapes while her slower 
mates were wrestling with one ; a leader in all the 
healthy, honest mischief in the school, carried too far 
frequently by her love of fun, but always owning up to 


102 


POLLY'S LNTKODUCTION. 


her share handsomely ; keen of observation, unspar- 
ing of tongue, but generous, honorable, and the great- 
est laugher at Glen Mary. She had small, brilliant 
black eyes, a very turned-up nose, a wide mouth full 
of sparkling teeth, each separated a little from the 
other, a good chin and forehead, and a quantity of 
black hair plaited in a short tight pigtail. 

“What section are you going in, Polly?” she asked. 

“ I don’t know,” answered Polly. “ I haven’t 
heard.” 

“What have you been studying?” 

“Well,” said Polly, “ since mamma’s been sick Jack 
and I have done our mathematics together and chem- 
istry and natural history ” 

“My glory, girl ! ” interrupted Jinsie, “ those are 
sophomore studies. Why, look here,” and she began 
to walk around Polly in the flighty manner of a 
crane with cramp in its toes: “you are not going 
to be an infant phenomenon, are you ? Donty for 
I’ve taken a fancy to you, and I never could abide 
prodigies.” 

Polly laughed, and in a few minutes a number of 
other girls gathered around them ready for anything 
that should turn up about the new scholar, ready to 
love her, or tease her, or welcome her, or ignore her, 
whichever idea came first into their “sudden ” young 
minds. 

About a dozen were introduced in such rapid suc- 
cession that Polly said : 

“ I’m mighty glad to meet you all ; but if you’ll only 
hold your horses a minute, Jinsie, I’ll be able to cut 
out the right girls as you call their names.” (This 
stock-slang that Polly used so fluently was one of 
Elizabeth’s trials.) 


POLLY'S INTRODUCTION. IO3 

“Oh,” said Jinsie rapturously, “you are a brickbat 
of purest ray serene. What de-light-ful words ! You 
must teach me a whole lot of them, and I’ll teach you 
— let me see, what will I teach you ? That learned 
brother of yours hasn’t left me much chance ” 

“ Brother ? I haven’t any brother.” 

“ But you said Who is ‘ Jack,’ then ? ” 

“ He’s my father.” 

“ And you call him by his first name ? Hi, just 
you wait till the bears come eat you for disre- 
spect ! ” 

“ Huh ! Jack don’t mind. But did you say bears? 
Are there any round here?” asked Polly with much 
interest. 

“ Don’t be afraid,” said Jinsie in an assuring tone; 
“ they can’t get in by the front way, and we’ve never 
seen any in the woods yet." Which was certainly 
true, but the manner implied they might have come 
the day before and more than probably would the day 
after. 

“ No,” said Polly, “ I’m not afraid. I was wonder- 
ing if I could get a shot at ’em. I never killed but 
one, and he was only a cinnamon ” 

“Phenomenon,” interrupted Jinsie, “you’ve got me 
this time, and you do it so well, too — look almost as if 
you meant it.” 

“ I do,” said Polly; “ why shouldn’t I ? ” 

“ You mean it !” said Jinsie. “ Well, pick me up on 
a chip. I’m but a fragile fragment now,” and she fell 
against Gwendolen, who breathed hard, but stood her 
ground, propping Jinsie up on her fat hands and con- 
tinuing to stare unwinkingly at Polly. 

“ What’s queer about that, Elsie ? ” asked Polly. 
“ It was one day when Wicketty Wiz ” 


IC4 FOLLY'S INTRODUCTION. 

“ Wicketty Whiches ? ” asked Jinsie, bouncing up 
and snapping her eyes with delight. 

“ Who is this — ah — young person ? ” asked a super- 
cilious voice at their elbows. 

All the geniality went out of Jinsie’s face, but her 
only answer was : “ Ah, there. Chocolate drop ! ” 
While Elsie with her unfailing courtesy answered; 

“ It is the new pupil. Miss Worthington, Miss 
Van Houten.” 

Polly turned and put out her hand. The new- 
comer took no notice of it, but stood staring at her 
through a lorgnon of shell mounted in gold — an elab- 
orate thing for a woman of society and ridiculous for 
a schoolgirl. There was an impertinence in the stare 
that made Polly, as she dropped her hand, clinch it 
and draw down her brows angrily, while she returned 
the look with one so haughty that the other girl 
lowered her glass and said: 

“ Ah — where are you from ? ” 

And Polly, answering as Jack always answered, 
said : 

“ From Maryland, God bless her ! ” 

“ How extraordinary ! ” drawled Miss Van Houten. 
“ What do you suppose she means ? ” And the girl 
on whose arm she leaned laughed obediently and 
shrugged her shoulders. 

But a handsome, dignified girl of about seventeen 
who was passing stopped, and, with a pleasant look, 
put out her hand to Polly; 

“That’s well said. I come from dear old -Mary- 
land too, and I say with you most heartily; ‘God 
bless her ! ’ What is your name ? ” 

“ Mary Howard Worthington,” answered Polly. 

“ That certainly does sound like home, and I’m 


POLLY'S INTRODUCTION^. 105 

glad to welcome you. I’m Annie Lee, of Blenheim,” 
and she hurried on to an “ extra,” for she was taking 
a two years’ course in one. 

“ You missed it that time. Chocolate-drop,” 
chuckled Jinsie. 

Miss Van Houten turned sharply on her, and in 
her most freezing manner answered: 

“ Miss Lee can permit herself eccentricities of 
speech and manner because she belongs to such an 
old and distinguished family. We of the upper 
classes are not bound by the same rules as — as — 
others,” she ended lamely, for she caught such a mis- 
chievous glitter in Jinsie’s eyes she realized she had 
gone too far. 

“ Are they balloonists, or lamplighters, or chimney- 
sweeps, Miss Van Houten ? ” she asked with deep 
interest. 

“ Ah — what do you mean ? ” 

“ Why, your family. You say ‘ upper classes,’ and 
those are the three upperest I know of.” 

A deep flush rushed over the girl’s face, and mut- 
tering “ Impertinent ! ” she turned on her heel and 
went off on her satellite’s arm. 

Jinsie’s parting shot followed swiftly. “ Put up 
that gilded fraud and you’ll see more clearly — lots of 
things,” she added with a mocking little laugh. 
“ Don’t mind her, Polly, she’s a pig — a chocolate- 
pfg,” she added hastily, as Elsie’s gentle voice said 
“ Janet ! ” 

“ That’s a compliment, Elsie,” she continued, “ for 
chocolate-pigs are good — when they are licked. And 
don't call me Janet. I always feel as if I had been 
naughty when anybody calls me that. There was 
Sister Philomena yesterday ” 


io6 


POLL V IN TROD UCTION. 


“ And here she is to-day,” said a breezy voice, 
“and with the same warning: ‘Watch your tongue, 
my dear.’ ” 

“ I couldn’t. Sister Phillie. It would make me cross- 
eyed,” said Jinsie. “Besides, Marie Van Houten is 
such a — well, she was putting on thousand-dollar airs 
in a five-cent manner, and I do certainly despise ” 

A small hand came round over her mouth, and her 
head was drawn back by Elsie, who kissed her cheek 
and said: “ Don’t. Let’s leave her alone and talk 
about something pleasant.” 

“ Oh, you little pot of vaseline ! ” grumbled Jinsie. 
“You are always oiling the rusty places. Get out! 
Polly, can you do gymnastics ?” 

“ Yes,” said Polly, simply. 

“That’s settled, then. What can you do ?” 

“ Bais, Indian clubs, ladders, fencing, and single- 
stick ” 

“ Fencing, did you say — regular downright fencing? 
Will you teach me ? Oh, Polly, I’ll love you like pea- 
nuts and taffy if you only will.” 

“ Indeed I will,” said Polly, cordially, for her heart 
warmed more and more to the quaint girl. “ I’ve got 
my foils and stick in the same box with my rifle ” 

^'‘Wofit the Turkey have a fit when they drop out! ” 
muttered Jinsie, rubbing her hands delightedly and 
patting a few steps of Juba. 

Elsie shook her head gently as Polly asked : 

“ Who is the Turkey ? ” 

“ She’s the assistant in the wardrobe ” began 

Elsie, when Jinsie broke in : 

“ She is indeed, alas! and on her report of the state 
of my rips and tears I have learned more definitions 
and Virgil than would swamp a canal-boat.” 


POLL Y’S INTRO D UCTION, 


107 


“She is a little woman,” continued Elsie, “who lost 
her husband and child in a powder-mill explosion. 
The little boy had taken his father’s dinner to him and 
was talking with him when it happened. Then she 
came here and has helped to mend and make ever 
since ” 

“ She has,” cut in Jinsie; “ and when she’s not rolling 
her eyes and sighing over your zigzag tears and whole- 
foot darns, or trying on your dresses with fingers so 
cold you think a slug is crawling on your neck, she’s 
stepping anxiously about, doing her head just like a 
turkey in the grass.” Here she walked a few paces in 
the manner described, and it was so funny the girls 
shouted. “I declare,” added Jinsie as she returned 
to the group, “ I expect every minute to hear her say 
‘ Peep, peep, peep ! ’ ” 

The ringing of a bell scattered the group so suddenly 
that Polly found herself scudding along after Elsie, 
through a silence that oppressed her, to the forms run- 
ning the length of the room. When they were seated 
the monitor read several announcements, winding up 
with: 

“ Young ladies, you will now proceed to the study- 
hall. Miss Worthington will go to the Directress’ 
room to be assigned to a section.” 

And like drilled soldiers they filed out, while Polly 
went in to Sister Constance, there to undergo a careful 
examination, conducted in so friendly and simple 
a manner that the good religious was soon in possession 
of the child’s habit of study, her attainments, and her 
qualifications. 

As might have been expected, it was a curious enough 
mosaic that was disclosed to her inspection, and she 
was not a little puzzled how to grade Polly ; for in 


io8 


POLLY'S FRIENDS. 


certain studies she was as far advanced as the juniors, 
and in others fully abreast of the sophomores; but in 
others still she was scarcely up to the requirements of 
the fourth class, in which the cleverest girls of thirteen 
and fourteen were working, although too far ahead of 
the girls of her own age by at least two years. 

The course at Glen Mary was eight years, and to this 
Mother Ottilia had been forced to add a preparatory 
department — virtually a kindergarten — which none 
under five or over nine might enter, and from which 
they stepped in regular order to the first, second, third, 
and fourth sections, and thence entered upon the final 
four years’ course of study. The standard was exceed- 
ingly high, and when the seniors had passed their final 
examinations successfully the State conferred the 
diplomas. 

Sister Constance talked it over with Mother, and 
Mother included Polly in the consultation, with the 
result that she was put in the same section with Elsie 
and Jinsie for the sake of discipline and routine, with 
the understanding that later she might skip a class 
should it prove that she had too much leisure on her 
hands. 


CHAPTER XI. 

POLLY'S FRIENDS. 

JT was only gradually that Polly could adjust herself 
to her new life. The studies she did not mind, she 
enjoyed her friends, and the brook supplied endless 
resources ; but the restraint, the silence, the regular 
discipline and unvarying routine were very irksome. 
She missed her long rides, she missed the high North- 
ern atmosphere, she missed her pets, she missed — ah. 


POLLY'S FRIENDS. 


109 


how she did miss Jack’s companionship and her 
mother’s gentle love! She missed Mammy Margaret 
and the boys, and she even thought tenderly of Wang 
in the flood of homesickness that swept over her now 
and then. 

The gymnasium was her great safety-valve ; and 
whenever Jinsie saw her furiously whirling the Indian- 
clubs, or flying’ through the air on the trapeze, or 
bombarding the target with bean-bags she would say — 
gently for her: 

“ Got ’em again ? Well, never mind, give it to old 
Waddums ” (which was the name she had given the 
shapeless figure that held the basket). “When you feel 
that way always thump something, never mind what it 
is — anything will do; thump me if there’s nothing else 
handy.” 

And then when Polly would smile she’d grin joyous- 
ly and invite her to some acrobatic prank that would 
leave them both barely enough breath to get to their 
bath-rooms, turn on the spray, and rub down in time 
for the next bell. 

Another great resource in these early days was a 
visit to Montrose and Dundee, and those two superior 
dogs knew half-holidays just as well as she did and 
enjoyed them just as much. Sometimes she would per- 
suade Elsie, Jinsie, and Gwendolen — for the Triangle 
had become a Square — to wander into the stables just 
for the sight of the honest eyes of the horses and the 
broad backs of the cows. She could not approve of 
the “ stock,” which was very ordinary; but they were 
“critters,” and she won the blind worship of old 
Cobden by her intelligence on this most congenial 
subject, and the stories she told him of those wide 
horizons to which she turned so lovingly. 


no 


POLLY'S FRIENDS. 


“You see, miss,” he said confidentially one day to 
Polly, while the girls sat on a rack of sweet hay in an 
empty stall and watched him forking out and measur- 
ing the supper for the home-coming cattle, “ my 
coming here was this a-way. I was always uncommon 
fond of sport, and from the time I could stand I’d 
hang around the racing-stables in our parts; and first 
I was a horse-boy, then I exercised the horses, then I 
got to be a featherweight rider, then I took a big jump 
and come out a rattling steeplechaser. 

“ Lord love you, miss, till you’ve rode a steeple- 
chase you don’t know what motion is ! To see the 
ground rising up in your face or falling away from 
your feet; to see the hurdles a-bullying of you with 
their size, and then to take ’em; to see a stone wall, 
or a river, and clear ’em like a bird; to know you’re 
leaving the other fellows behind you, and to know you 
are carrying a broken neck or a snapped backbone in 
the pocket of your breeches — Lord, Lord, but it’s fine ! 

“ I never got beat, and I got to believing that I 
never could get beat, and that’s just where I was main 
silly; for they brought me a big, ramping red mare one 
day that had killed three men, and they made a big 
bet I couldn’t back her. I did that easy enough, and 
once she got used to me what a goer she was ! 

“ Her owner was fair wild with delight, and then 
nothing would do the pair of us but I’d ride a steeple- 
chase on her. We knocked the field out, and just as 
we rose to the last wall something sprang away — a hare 
it must have been — and she swerved, caught on the 
top stones, and we all rolled over together, she with 
her neck broke, and me that smashed between her and 
the stones the surgeons said they wouldn’t give a 
tuppence-ha’penny for my life. But I got up again 


POLLY'S FRIENDS. 


Ill 


somehow. I couldn’t do any work though, and one 
day I was shuffling along a leetle — well, maybe more 
than a leetle high, and I heard somebody say: 

“‘Why are you drunk so early in the morning?’ 

“ I looked up, and there was a little lady all in 
black and white, and she fair held me with her big 
gray eyes. 

“ ‘ Because I ain’t got any taste for my feed, and I 
ain’t able to do nothing till I take a nip, and I took it 
early to-day to take the chill off of the morning,’ says I. 

“‘Why can’t you work till you’ve drank some- 
thing?’ 

“ ‘ Smashed up in a steeplechase and my innards 
wrong from it,’ says 1. 

“ ‘ Then you know something about horses. Do you 
know anything about cows ? ’ 

“ ‘ I know horses a heap better’n I know ABC; but 
as for cows, I ain’t never rode those colors.’ 

“ ‘ Do you want a place ? ’ says she. 

“‘Yes’m,’ said I. 

Come along, then,’ says she; and I’m blest if she 
didn’t walk me straight to the docks and aboard ship, 
and we was off to America before I could say ‘Jack 
Robinson.’ That was Mother up there, and she took 
me on a big chance; the people at the hotel had told 
her about me being the only man that ever backed 
Kunigunda, and how I doctored all their horses free, 
and wasn’t a bad sort, but had got to crooking my 
elbow too frequent and was a long way on the road 
to the dogs; and as she was going to sail the very next 
day she just took me along and brought me here, and 
here I am. She’s awful cute, she is. Told me if I 
had grit to ride Kunigunda I had enough to stop 
drinking, and I had to ! ” 


II2 


POLLY'S FRLENDS, 


His wide grin betrayed his intense enjoyment of 
Mother’s ability, and he was about to say more on this 
his favorite subject, when a shrill call interrupted him. 

“ There goes the call for a game, miss, and I’m 
much obliged to you little ladies for your visit. Come 
again,” he said as they trooped off. 

Mother believed in outdoor exercise^ and there were 
a dozen things for the children to do during the fair- 
weather recreation-hours; golf was the latest, and to 
give a greater impulse to this sport Polly was asked, as 
spring opened, to teach them lacrosse, which she did 
with such vim and such tireless ardor that only 
bundles of wires like Jinsie could keep up with her. 

The double pipe-call that summoned them now 
came from the two sets of players who almost fought 
for the possession of the two girls, believing them to 
be perfect mascots, and with a much better basis for 
their belief than is usual in such cases. Sometimes 
the golf set got one and the lacrosse the other ; but 
it occasionally happened that the same game claimed 
both. Then there was fun, for Polly’s steady eye, un- 
flinching nerve, and tireless muscles were an even 
match for Jinsie’s reckless dash and daring play, and 
nothing but the actual sounding of the big bell could 
drag them away from the field or the links as the case 
might be. 

This particular evening these two, panting and 
triumphant (for neither had been able to get the better 
of the other), were racing along to make up for lost 
time, and took a short cut by the simple process of 
clearing the brook with leaping-poles; and as they 
came past the grotto they heard the sound of cries and 
laughter, after which Marie Van Houten’s voice was 
audible. 


POLLY'S FRIENDS. 


II3 

They would have gone on, but pressed against the 
inner rocks they saw the slight figure of one of the 
girls of the third class, her face white, her hands 
clinched, and a baited look in her eyes that made 
them know something was wrong. 

The group was so intent upon its victim that no 
one noticed Polly and Jinsie, who stood a moment in 
time to hear: 

You won’t tell me, won’t you? Very well; girls, 
she don't k7iow who she is. She’s a charity scholar. 
She must have been left at the door in a basket. 
That’s it. She’s a foundling. Pah ! you are a disgrace 
to the school ! ” 

At every pause her followers raised their voices in 
screams they meant for laughter, while the girl, trem- 
bling from head to foot with passion, struggled des- 
perately for composure. 

Mistaking the signs of emotion for fear, the heartless 
girl grew more insolent. 

“ What shall we do to teach her her place ? The 
idea of ladies (?) being forced to associate with such a 
girl ! One of you hold her, and I’ll give her a lesson.” 

I wouldn’t. Chocolate-pig — I mean drop,” said 
Jinsie very quietly. 

She started, but, relying on the strength of her fol- 
lowing, turned round and said imperiously: “ Hold 
her, Bessie.” This was to the .most abject of her 
devotees, a rather clumsy, heavily built girl of about 
fifteen. 

“ Stop ! ” said Polly. 

“ Oh, you,” sneered Marie, “ the cow-girl. Isn’t that 
what they call you out West ? Or is it half-breed ? I 
know it’s \vdM-bred anyway, and that half bad.” 

This graceful witticism was greeted with applause; 


14 


POLLY'S FRIENDS. 


and had Marie been as clever as she was mali- 
cious, the rest would not have happened. But she 
advanced towards her victim with her hand raised, 
and then she thought of earthquakes and other things 
too inchoate to be defined in words. Her head flew 
back and forth. Her shoulders were gripped with a 
force that made her shriek — or rather try to, for she 
was shaken so violently that the sky reeled and the 
breath was taken from her. She was conscious of a 
great lonesomeness, and of a wrathful face that came 
and went but never disappeared; and finally, when 
this seemed to have gone on indefinitely, she heard a 
voice saying: 

“You coward ! oh, you coivard ! Try that on once 
again, and see what you’ll get next time.’’ And then 
she was seated very sharply on the bench; and when 
the trees and clouds had settled to their proper places 
she saw she was alone, that up the steep path to the 
house went Jinsie, driving ahead of her, with her la- 
crosse stick, her — Marie’s — band of devotees, and 
singing at the pitch of her lungs that moving ballad, 

“ Rat-a-plan, rat-a-plan.” 

from “ Box and Cox.” Behind her walked Polly, her 
arm flung over the shoulder of the girl she had cham- 
pioned so fiercely, evidently trying to comfort her, for 
she was crying bitterly. 

“ I’ll get even,” Marie muttered, “ oh,' I’ll get even, 
and make you wish you’d never left your cow-sheds 
and pig-pens by the time I’m through with you, you 
little fiend !” And then she pulled herself up the slope 
to the infirmary, where she told Sister Aloysius, with 
more truth than she usually expended on any state- 
ment, that she had a headache and felt so badly she 
could not even report to Sister Constance, 


POLLY'S FRIENDS. 

Meantime the two groups had halted near the 
entrance, where Jinsie laid down the law in a very few 
words: 

“ If we hear one word of this, or if you try to bully 
Dolores again. I’ll go to Sister Constance and tell her 
the whole thing as Polly and I saw it and heard it." 

The culprits w^ere so relieved to hear there was any 
loophole of escape, and were so helpless without 
their leader, that they seized the chance and eagerly 
declared they wouldn’t say a word; but one of them 
added: 

“ How do we know you won’t tell anyway ? ’’ 

“ Huh ! ’’ snorted Jinsie, “ there’s no use for tattlers 
at Glen Mary. You ought to know that by this time.’’ 

Which was rubbing it in a bit, as this particular girl 
owed her stay at school largely to the silence of her 
schoolmates. Mother’s hobby, “honor,” having proved 
very contagious to the majority of the girls. 

“ Honor,” she used to say, “ is one of the fairest 
plants in the garden of an upright soul. It is rooted 
in charity, its blossom is self-sacrifice, and its perfume 
is eternal.” 

As they all came into the playroom after studies 
that night, Polly said to the Square: 

“Say” (yes, I’m sorry, but she did), “let’s be a 
what-you-may-call-’em, a five-pointed arrangement, 
and take in that Dolores. She needs looking after, 
and I’m sorry for her. But I’d like her a heap better 
if she had more get-up-and-get to her. If Fd been in 
her place I’d have given it to that Marie girl hot — 
straight from the shoulder.” 

“ I don’t think you would, Polly ” 

“ Yes, I would, Elsie. I’d have pounded her 
good." 


Il6 POLLY^S FRIENDS, 

“ Not if you had been in her place.” 

“ Why not ? ” 

She’s getting ready for her Confirmation.” 

“ Yes, she said that, but she cried so hard then 
that I couldn’t tell what she was saying. Besides, 
what difference does that make ? ” 

Even Jinsie raised her eyebrows at this, and Gwen, 
as usual when much moved, breathed hard, while 
Elsie anwered quickly: 

“All the world, Polly, dear.” 

“ And something of the next into the bargain,” 
added Jinsie. 

“ I don’t see it,” said Polly. “ Now look here: the 
only way to treat a bully is to stamp on him with both 
feet till he can’t see. Once will do it, for he’s always 
a coward, and it makes things a heap pleasanter all 
around afterwards. Jack says ‘open warfare is the 
best peace,’ and you bet he knows the code.” 

“ Yes, and it seems like a good rule,” said Elsie, her 
dove’s eyes earnest yet dreamy. “ But Our Lord 
made another law, and Dolores was trying to mind 
that. You know, Polly, when you are confirmed you 
make all the promises yourself that were made for 
you when you were baptized ; and you become ‘ a 
soldier of Christ ’ when the bishop lays his hands on 
your head and says: ‘ Receive ye the Holy Ghost,’ 
for He comes into your heart and makes you so strong 
that you are willing to do anything, even to die for 
your faith.” 

“That part would be easy,” said Jinsie with an 
unusally serious look on her face. “For then you’d 
be a martyr and sure of getting to heaven. But the 
part that fetches me is ‘ renouncing the devil and all 
his works and pomps ’ — especially if you live long and 


POLLY^S FRIENDS. 


II7 

are not any great shakes to start with in the way of 
goodness.” 

“And what gets me^' said Gwendolen, “is being 
satisfied with every^mg God sends you. It ain’t 
pleasant,” she went on tearfully, “ to be fat and big 
and stupid, and — and — ugly as a hedgehog ” (she 
meant hedgerow) “ when your mother is beautiful 
and wants you to be clever and pretty and graceful. 
I try and try to be ’em, but I cannot. Papa don’t 
mind; but he and I look just alike, and mamma says 
we’re a pair of frights. I can't get my waist smaller 
without losing any breath, and I get so hungry I have 
to eat all my meals, and when I run you know what 
happens.” 

“ Never mind, old girl,” said Jinsie, to whom, as 
usual, she turned, “just you work away at the gym. 
The more you work the wider your shoulders get, and 
the wider your shoulders get the smaller your waist’ll 
look ; and you go ahead and eat, for good food makes 
good health. I know it, because I heard Sister Jus- 
tinian scolding the butcher the other day, and telfing 
him he just had to bring the best meat, that Mother 
wanted it for ‘those young growing creatures ’ — I felt 
like a pumpkin-vine or a colt — and good health means 
good looks, and — and ” 

“ And don’t you remember what Annie Lee said last 
week ?” added Elsie. 

“ Yes,” said Gwen, her homely face lighting up with 
a very pleasant smile as she turned to Polly; “Marie 
Van Houten was talking to her when I went by, and 
she said : ‘ Miss Lee, don’t you think the convent 
makes a mistake in spending so much money for fuel 
when all that — ah — caloric is on hand ? ’ ‘What do you 
mean. Miss Van Houten,’ Annie Lee said, ‘what ca- 


Ii8 


POLLY'S FRIENDS. 


loric ? ’ ‘The caloric of the name of Jiibbins,’ she 
said, and then she laughed. But Annie Lee said : 
‘ You disagree with the great Titian, Miss Van Houten, 
if you dislike ruddy hair, and Gwen is a case of : 

“ ‘ “ Kind hearts are more than coronets, 

And simple faith than Norman blood.’” 

“Then she added, ‘You must excuse me now, I 
have an engagement to walk with one of my friends.’ 

And Marie was mad, as mad as a — a ” 

“ Hatter,” finished Jinsie. “Good for you, Gwen! 
you're all right. And having a girl like Annie Lee go 

bail for you is worth having Chocolate-drop ” 

“ What do you call her that for ? ” asked Polly. 

“ Why, Van Houten’s chocolate and cocoa, you 
know. She really isn’t related to them — him I mean, 
but it makes her so piping mad to have anybody think 
her people are in business — ‘ trade,’ she calls it — now 
think of that for an American girl, will you ! — that 1 
just naturally call her Chocolate-drop and ask her the 
price of sugar and chocolate-sticks every chance I get. 
I certainly do despise her. No, there’s no chance of 
Confirmation for me this year, and Marie’s one of the 
works and pomps, ’specially the pomps. My! what a 
pity it is she didn’t have a say-so in her own ‘ borning ’! 
She’d have picked out Queen Victoria for her mother 
at the very least. She’s a pill.” 

“She certainly is,” said Polly. “And she’d better 
keep out of my road. But you haven’t told me yet 
why Dolores mustn’t fight her even if she is going to 
be confirmed. Jack says fight fair and you’re all 
right.” And she turned to Elsie, as they all did 
instinctively when it was a question of religion. 

“I thought I had told you,” she answered; “but 


POLLY'S FRIENDS, 


119 


wait a minute till I get it all straight, for Father Ber- 
nard was telling us about it only last Sunday at instruc- 
tions,. and I wrote it down afterwards. I have it 
in my pocket somewhere. Oh, yes, here it is! He 
said : 

“ ‘ Our Lord suffered for us, died for us, bought 
heaven for us with the last drop of His blood. 
Wasn’t that enough to make us love Him with all our 
hearts and try to show our gratitude? But what can 
we do for God ? The universe is His. He created 
the sea and the sky and the earth by a word. He has 
to praise Him the choirs of angels, the hosts of saints, 
the cloud of martyrs, and the toiling world of the faith- 
ful. So what can w do ? Now, that is just the point on 
which Our Lord has taken pains to instruct us, and all 
the instructions are put in a few words. ‘ If you love 
Me, keep My commandments.’ That we wt'llkeep them 
is promised for us in Baptism, and it means a long list 
for us. Serving God faithfully ; forgiving our enemies 
and them that despitefully use us; keeping our tem- 
pers under control ; obeying our parents and lawful su- 
periors ; giving up our own way when it conflicts with 

duty; not speaking unkindly about anybody ’ ” 

“ I know, but my horse is gone before I can lock the 
stable door,” m-uttered Jinsie, just as Polly said: 

“ Not if what you say about ’em is fme ? ” 

“ Father Bernard says that doesn’t help us any. Here 
it is: 

“ ‘Hate the sin all you want to — and the more the bet- 
ter, because we avoid what we hate — but never hate the 
sinner; for St. Paul says that charity is greater even 
than faith and hope, and we are told to forgive our 

brother seventy times seven 

“/ don’t,” said Jinsie, “ I forgive him just once — 


126 


POLLY'S PRIEN-DS. 


and sometimes not that; and then I tunk him gently, 
but firmly, on the top of his head with whatever comes 
handy.” 

‘^Keep your temper just as long as you can, because 
it’s right (besides, it gives you the bulge on the other 
fellow), and mind your captain after you enlist,” Polly 
had heard Jack say until it was ground into her head 
as a principle to be broken only under the extremest 
provocation. But here were restraint and obedience 
laid down as laws of God to which no exceptions were 
noted. Besides, “ giving up your own way and never 
speaking unkindly of any one,” that was very much 
another thing. She wondered if Mammy Margaret 
could have promised all of these things for her the day 
she was baptized, and she also wondered whether wear- 
ing her Marquette was in any way an obligation upon 
her to keep such promises. For promises are a se- 
rious matter under the code. 

“I reckon,” she said slowly, “I’ll have to go with 
you all next time Father Bernard comes, and ask him 
some questions.” 

Which she did, interesting him not a little by the 
way she put them and the line of argument she fol- 
lowed; and often, as the dawn walked over the hills 
and the sun flashed through the stained-glass windows 
on the tabernacle while he said his Mass, he prayed 
for that honest young soul which, like the sleeping 
world, was w-aiting for the light — the dawn of faith 
and the rising of the Sun of justice. And to his prayer 
he began to add: 

“ O Marquette, soldier of the cross, pray thou for 
this child. She wears the badge thou didst love — the 
medal of Our Lady. In life thou didst ever strive to 
lead souls to her feet that she,, the Blessed Maid, 


POLLY'S PJYA'MY. 


121 


might present them to her Son. Now in the higher 
life plead thou for thy little client.” 

Polly’s absolute honesty had struck an answering 
chord in his own strong nature, and he cordially re- 
spected the resolute way in which she tackled the 
problems that began to rise before her, and her efforts 
to reconcile her standards of honor, duty, and obliga- 
tion — based on high natural principles — with the de- 
mands of the higher ideals opened up by the short 
instructions she heard, the atmosphere of her daily 
life, the example of the Sisters, Elsie, and a few beau- 
tiful souls like hers, and above all the effect their 
faith had on her three other dissimilar intimates; for 
it restrained even Jinsie’s volatility, spurred on Gwen- 
dolen’s heaviness, and controlled and sustained Dolores 
under her fiery trials. 


CHAPTER XII. 

POLLY'S ENEMY. 

jYJARIE VAN HOUTEN, the heroine of the un- 
lovely episode in the grotto, was a girl who 
caused much anxious thought to the Sisters of Glen 
Mary. 

She had come to the convent alone — except for 
her maid — in the fall of ’92, and at the end of the 
scholastic year went home alone, except for the same 
maid. There was some excuse at first about her 
parents being abroad ; but the next year nothing was 
said at all, although she brought the maid again — a 
pretty, modest little German, who apparently spoke no 
English, was always dressed in a very smart, natty 


\22 


POLLY'S ENEM Y. 


way and seemed to stand in great awe of her imperious 
young mistress. 

She had no visitors, but she talked incessantly of 
her father’s fortune, her mother’s intimacy with the 
“Four Hundred,” her own plans for the future, her 
distinguished connections, her aristocratic tastes, 
prejudices, and prerogatives, and her only apparent 
object in life was to be what she called “a leader of 
society.” 

Of the self-abnegation, self-control, culture, sym- 
pathy, and good-breeding requisite to make a true 
social leader she had no conception, but seemed to 
think that her repeated assertions established her 
claim ; and not knowing that her ideal was founded 
on ignorance, her every attempt to live up — or down — 
to it was offensive. She was arrogant where she 
meant to be dignified, rude where she meant to be 
reserved, loud where silence should have expressed 
pleasure or displeasure ; she was insolent or vulgar 
where she meant to be witty ; besides all of which she 
was lazy and very careless as to the truth of her state- 
ments. 

The last two qualities she kept out of the sight of 
her teachers very skilfully, but she had two axioms 
for her followers on these points. The first was : “ Why 
should I study? I shall never have to earn my own 
living.” The second was : “ Diplomacy is absolutely 
necessary to a successful society woman ” — and alas ! 
wdth all the other misconceptions she believed diplo- 
macy and lying to be equivalent terms. 

So she copied her lessons worked out by some of 
her followers, cultivated the infirmary, and let her 
imagination run riot. But to her French and music 
she devoted herself, because “ every society woman is 


POLLY'S ENEMY. 


123 


expected to study music, and 710 society woman is 
without French.” She declared these two branches 
had brought her to Glen Mary — justly celebrated for 
both — “ otherwise I could never have stood the seclu- 
sion, my life is so gay at home ; ” for, although only 
fifteen, she declared that her list of engagements was 
endless, and she had so much attention it was very 
hard to give it all up. And then would follow 
accounts of how her maid always brought the flowers 
and notes that had been sent her to her room with 
her coffee, and the room itself came in for such a 
description that it must have looked like an art-furni- 
ture house and a jeweller’s shop combined ; and 
finally there were scarcely veiled insinuations about a 
tremendous love-affair — with a young millionaire, of 
course — and every incident rolled along on gold 
wheels over red velvet. 

Upon a certain class of girls all this had its effect, 
and by the exertion of several qualities — wheedling 
and bullying especially — she had a strong following, 
many of whom flattered her by a more or less eager 
imitation of her follies and faults. She held her band 
together with an iron hand ; and as she was generous 
with her candy and goodies, and lavish of invitation 
and promise for that magical time when she should 
“ come out,” there were never any open rebels ; and 
it was this very concreteness that made Sister Con- 
stance so anxious as to the effect it would all have on 
their characters. However, there were no overt acts, 
and she had to content herself with watching and 
praying. 

She had probed Marie’s character with her keen, 
tender gaze, and had tried to measure its capacities 
for good and evil ; but she had yet to find a point on 


124 


POLLY'S EiVEMY. 


which to rest an appeal to the girl’s higher nature. 
Beyond a certain depth she could never go ; a hard 
sort of worldly wisdom and a crude cynicism were all 
she found, surrounded by a waste of such bald worldli- 
ness of taste that she was overcome with pity, and 
tried so persistently to waken some response that one 
day Marie laughed her artificial laugh and said 

“ You needn’t try to convert me, Sister. Romanism 
has no charms for me.” To her followers she added : 
“ It doesn’t pay. I am going to join the fashionable 
church wherever I am, for that’s one of the surest ways 
to keep yourself in with the best people in the place ” 
— by “ best ” of course she meant the smartest set— 
“ your own sort, I mean, of course,” she added 
hastily. 

Unattractive as this all was, it would not have 
seemed so hopeless had she shown any sensibility or 
kindness of heart ; but she ridiculed everything and 
everybody within safe reach, and she seemed to enjoy 
tormenting anything smaller and weaker than herself ; 
“teasing” she called it, and sometimes in a genial 
mood she described herself as “ a great tease,” The 
little children disliked and feared her, and scudded 
off like rabbits whenever they crossed her path ; and 
her tongue, whetted to this double edge, was the 
misery of several sensitive girls whose reserve kept 
them from complaining and whose poor little hearts 
suffered in silence. 

Dolores was her latest victim and “the best fun,” 
for her hot Spanish blood was so quickly inflamed 
•and her devout heart struggled so nobly to conquer 
that the child would feel ill after these encounters. 

The day that led to Polly’s interference had been a 
dreadful one. Dolores was to be confirmed the fol- 


POLLY'S ENEMY. 


125 


lowing month; she had been to holy communion 
that morning, and had offered it that she might re- 
ceive worthily that great sacrament of the Holy 
Ghost. She had gone to the little grotto to meditate 
quietly, when Marie with three of her followers came 
by, and stopped just because she thought she would 
be unwelcome. 

“ What are you doing there ? ” she asked roughly. 

“ Nothing — much,” answered Dolores. 

“ Get up, then; 1 want that seat.” 

Dolores rose, and started to leave rather than risk 
feeling anger on this day, when she had made so 
many good resolutions. 

“ No, you are not going. You are going to stay 
here and amuse me. I have something I want to ask 
you. I hear you never leave here in vacation. Is 
that true ? ” 

“ It is true,” answered Dolores with a straitened 
feeling at her heart. 

“And that you’ve been here ever since you were 
five years old. Is that true ? ” 

“ It is.” 

“ Well, now, tell us all about it. Where were you 
born, and why don’t you go home ? ” 

“ My mother is dead,” said Dolores, in a low voice, 
the tears rising to her eyes. 

“ Oh, I say!” said one of Marie’s band, and she felt 
herself she had blundered ; but it only lent a new 
touch of sharpness to her voice as she said : 

“ Where is your father ? ” 

“ I don’t know,” answered Dolores, still lower. 

“ WhatV queried Marie. 

Dolores shook her head. 

“ Whoever heard of such a thing ! Girls, she 


26 


POLLY'S ENEMY. 


doesn’t know where her father is. Do you know who 
he is ? ” 

“ Certainly,” she flashed indignantly. 

“ Who is he ? What does he do ? Where did he 
live when you did know ? ” 

But Dolores shook her head again, for this was a 
grief that had eaten into her very heart and had kept 
her solitary among all the children. And now to 
have it laid bare so cruelly ! 

Then followed a shower of comments and ques- 
tions. But she closed her lips, and at first felt only 
her grief and a great desire to get away and cry ; 
then, as the heartless gibes began to fly, anger seized 
her, the blood rushed to her brain, and she was saved 
from falling on her tormentor only by the appearance 
of the two girls as described. 

Marie’s actual enmity to Polly dated from this time, 
active dislike dating earlier and from what she was 
pleased to consider an inexcusable state of things. 

It seems that in the last half of her first year she 
began to realize that the sort of leadership she had 
did not accomplish what she wanted; so in the second 
year she began to “cultivate the best girls ” — as she 
expressed it, cultivating, from her standpoint, meaning 
forcing herself upon them, assuming intimacies that 
did not exist, and ignoring the snubs and rebukes that 
were not lacking. The polite reserve of girls like 
Pogie Preston, Elsie Mitchell, Alice Sevier, Eunice 
Stryker, and Pauline Ewing she could not understand 
at all, and again and again came up against it like a 
wall. 

“ I don’t blame those women in the French Revolu- 
tion one bit,” she said to herself one day, after history 
class, when, savage with failure, she was trying for the 


CORPORAL JUSTINE'S STORY. 


\27 


many-eth time to find some explanation for it. 
“ Those girls don’t say or do a single thing I can take 
hold of; but they are polite., so polite Td like to slap 
them.” 

Which was strange thinking for a future society 
leader. 

It never occurred to her that her methods needed 
mending and it scored a black mark against Polly, 
for of these same girls one was devotedly intimate 
with her and the others wanted to be ; but they were 
in their “ Fresh” year and had their hands too full to 
indulge in any intimacies outside of the “ consolation- 
meets” they held when they wailed in chorus over 
problems and bumped their heads against the wall 
over theorems ; for still another of Mother’s opinions 
was that girls must be as well founded in mathematics 
as boys. “ It regulates the mind and disciplines the 
imagination,” she said. 

And, oh my me, but it does ! 


CHAPTER XIII. 

CORPORAL JUSTINE'S STORY. 

A S the early summer came on, Polly was promoted 
to the color-guard to her intense delight, and 
her new duties brought her in very close contact with 
one of the most unique figures at Glen Mary. 

This was Corporal Justine, who had sole care of 
the guns and who, although not one of the com- 
munity, spent as much if not more time in the chapel 
than did any of the Sisters. 

She was a sparely built woman, with the saddest 
pair of dark eyes one could well find. She always 


128 


CORPORAL JUSTINE'S STORY. 


wore a kilt-plaited skirt of army-blue cloth that fell 
nearly to her ankles, which were cased in stout gaiters 
over a pair of low-cut regulation army shoes. She 
wore a dark flannel blouse belted with a regulation belt, 
and a sack-coat of army blue with a corporal’s chev- 
rons in red on the sleeves, and an artilleryman’s but- 
tons and badge. Her head was covered with an army 
cap, on which in winter she wore a havelock of cloth, 
but in summer her closely braided gray-black hair 
and her gold hoop earrings showed beneath it in 
strange contrast to its military outlines. 

She was silent almost to the point of melancholy; 
but Polly, with her fearless habit of good comrade- 
ship, her enthusiasm, her questions, and her interest in 
the guns, managed to break through her persistent 
reserve; and when she began to chatter of Jack’s ad- 
ventures and to tell some of his war-stories by way of 
cheering her up, and, above all, as she invariably gave 
her her 'title of corporal and saluted, Justine began to 
thaw towards the hearty, healthy girl, and the two were 
not infrequently seen with their heads together near 
the guns in animated discussion. Gradually Polly 
persuaded her to include the other four in these talks 
which made her blood tingle and Jinsie’s eyes dance 
with excitement; for Justine’s rank was no fiction, but 
had been won in the line of duty, and, like “ Irish 
Molly ” of the Revolution, she stood on the rolls of 
the army and of the Pension Office, and her clothing 
was issued to her so often and of such quality by the 
authorities at Washington. 

One day the examinations were over and a few 
blissful idle mornings, with only a pretence of work, 
lay between the girls and Commencement. 

Our five were gathered about the flag-staff while 


CORPORAL JUSTINE'S STORY. 


129 


Justine was cleaning her guns — “cleaning them from 
the shadows of the crows flying over,” Jinsie declared, 
for they seemed spotless and had the soft lustre well- 
cleaned brass acquires in time. 

“I wonder ” began Gwendolen, and then 

stopped and stared at her reflectively for some minutes. 

“ Go on,” said Jinsie, and pinched her so suddenly 
that Gwen quite roared out the end of her sentence — 
“ how she came to go.” 

“ So do I,” added Elsie. 

Jinsie, grinning with delight at the success of her 
nip and at the chance opened up to gratify her own 
curiosity about the Corporal, gave Polly a gentle 
punch, and said: 

“ You ask her. Phenomenon.” 

“ Corporal,” began Polly. 

“ Eh, cherie ?” answered Justine without looking up. 

“ Will you do us a great favor ? ” 

“ But what can I do — me ? ” 

“ The greatest kind of a favor,” said Polly, going 
over to the side of the plat where she was rubbing and 
polishing. “ We want you to tell ” 

“ But if I talk I do not work,” interrupted Justine. 

“ Give me a rag, then,” said Polly, “ and Pll help.” 

“ Touch my guns ? ” said Justine, straightening her- 
self up, her buckskins and rubbing-rags falling un- 
heeded to the ground in her amazement. “ Any one 
touch my guns but me, myself, after all these years ? 
Oh, non, non, non, cherie ! My Denis, he have 
say 

But here she broke off, and picking up her cloths 
began to rub furiously, muttering : “ Non, non non !” 

“ You see,” continued Polly after a short silence, 
“ Jack’s always told me it was a gentleman’s first 


130 CORPORAL JUSTINE'S STORY. 

to fight for his country, and a lady’s to be ready to 
do anything she could. But you’ve had the best of it 
all around, iox you went and fought. That must have 
been fine ! And what we want, Corporal, is, won’t 
you please to tell us how you were able to do it ? ” 

“But ’’ began Justine. 

“ Do, like a dear,’’ interrupted Polly, going up to 
her and throwing one arm over her shoulder, while 
with the other hand she stayed the busy one of the 
Corporal. “ You see, we are going to scatter in a few 
days for the summer, and we do want to hear about 
it so awful much that we can’t wait.’’ 

“ Eh bien ! ’’ muttered Justine ; “and after all why 
not ? She’s a gallant little soul, this, and these others, 
they are not bad.’’ But she did not begin. 

Polly still kept her arm about her and still held in 
her grip the w'eather-beaten hand of Justine, and get- 
ting no answer she gave her an admonitory pat and 
said : 

“ Aren’t you going to ? Aw, do. Corporal. Please 
do, for you’re the only one I ever knew that had the 
luck of fighting, even if you weren’t a man.’’ 

And Polly sighed explosively. 

“Yes, said Justine, I’ll tell you.’’ 

The little chorus of delight that interrupted her 
made her look around surprised ; a slight red crept 
into her cheeks, and she nodded her head, repeating 
to herself her former opinion : 

“ Non, they are not bad, these others.’’ 

Then she gave a final rub to her three brass darlings 
and came and sat down on the trail of one of them, 
while the girls scrambled over to her feet and Polly 
leaned on her knee, 

“We were married when we were young, my Denis 


CORPORAL JUSTINE'S STORY. I3I 

and I ; such a pretty wedding, for I had been brought 
up and trained by the ‘ Helpers of the Holy Souls ’ 
— les cheres dames, que Dieu les benisse ! — and when 
one of their girls marry they give her her wedding- 
dress and a little dot ; so we were very proud and 
very glad and very happy. But when the winter is 
there it is bad. The ice is in the streets, and such 
cold — Br-r-r-r, it makes a chill to remember ! One 
day my Denis is hurrying home, and as he crosses the 
boulevard a horse slips and rolls against him ; he 
jump aside, but is struck by a carriage running the 
other way. He is knocked down, his head is cut, his 
leg is broken, and his shoulder sprained. Ah, there 
is trouble for you ! And the cold gets more ferocious 
and the fuel goes up and up, and food gets higher and 
harder, and when the spring comes we look like two 
spiders. The cold is settled in Denis’ shoulder, and I 
go for blanchisseuse de fin ; but the wage is small, the 
rooms wet and damp, and steam, steam all the time ; 
so bime-by I take a lung-fever, and then black trouble 
rides on the saddle. The ‘ Helpers ’ come and nurse, 
and when the lilacs. bloom they say : ‘ Now things will 
go better ’ ; but Denis he say : ‘ Let’s go to America,’ 
and we come. We land in Philadelphie. We make 
friends with a man on the wharf what is call a 
Quaker, and he talk to us like a compere and he say 
‘ Come to my house and stay overnight ; tell me 
what thee can do and I’ll do what I can for thee.’ 
It sound so good to hear the tutoyer that we go with 
light hearts, and his house is like the halls of the con- 
vent, so clean, so neat — everything nice ; but the 
supper is sent in on a tray from a cafe near by. It is 
a good supper, but taste bad because it is cold and 
greasy, and the bread is full of salts that bite the 


132 


CORPORAL JUSTINE'S STORY, 


tongue like pepper. So I say : ‘ Now why you do 
that ? For us ? Well, then, you must not. Give us 
what you have in the house.’ 

“But he smile and say: ‘That is exactly nothing, 
for I have no wife, no servant, only an old woman to 
come scrub and clean, and my meals always so.’ 

“ Then I say: ‘ You make us welcome; you our first 
friend. / make the cooking to-morrow.’ And first 
he say: ‘No, no’; but then bime-by Denis and he 
talk, and then they say: ‘ Why not ? ’ 

“ And we all go out to a magazine, and he start to 
buy bags and pounds ; but we say: ^Non, buy pounds 
and half-pounds and quarter-pounds.’ 

“And so bime-by he laugh and say: ‘All right; 
it’s your funeral this time.’ 

“ And Denis and I we think he is a little crazy, 
for there is no dead person there at all. 

“ I mix the bread that night, and Denis in the 
morning work, and pull, and treat it like he is learn 
at home, for he is a good baker. I make the coffee: 
it is delicious. I make the omelette: it is a dream. 

“ And he say: ‘ It is all good, but this coffee is the 
best I ever tasted; but, Madame Justine, in this country 
we must have meat, we who work. How about that ? ’ 
“ And I laugh and hold up my hands. ‘ Meat 
every day in the week ? What people! ’ 

“But he say ‘Yes’; so that day from the meat at 
dinner I save the ends and the bones, and next 
day there is a ragout for breakfast, and there is soup 
for dinner, and he hold up his hands and say: ‘What 
did thee make all that out of, hey ? ’ 

“ And when I say: ‘The ends and bones,’ he say: 
‘ I like to live on ends and bones every day.’ 

“ Then that night he say to Denis: ‘ Friend why, 


CORPORAL JUSTINE'S STORY. 133 

doesn’t thee and thy wife live here with me, instead of 
go West ? ’ 

“ And Denis say: ‘ But, monsieur, when our money 
is gone how we pay you?’ 

“ He say : ‘ Listen to me. When I ask thee to 
come here it is only for two or three days to keep a 
promise I have made.’ 

“ ‘ A promise ! ’ say Denis. ‘ About me ? But to 
whom, then, monsieur ? ’ 

“ ‘ To myself,’ he say. ‘ I have find a letter in that 
old desk from my grandfather when he is young. He 
has sent it from France when he is serving-man to 
Gouverneur Morris, and he tells how his life is save 
from the mob by a Frenchman. And I say: “ One good 
turn deserves another. Fll help a Frenchman some 
day.” And the next time I went down to the wharf, 
there thee is standing with thy wife, and I keep my 
word. But now thy wife show me I pay much money and 
get poor food, and I like to save my money when I can, 
and to turn a penny over whenever I can do it hon- 
estly. Now here’s a plan: Round here the saloons 
are too many. The men come out from work at twelve 
o’clock tired, hungry, thirsty ; they go to the saloon 
and pay ten cents for a drink ; then when six o’clock 
comes they more tired, more hungry, more thirsty, 
and they pay some more. Then bime-by one day they 
can’t do without it, and they are drink-hards. Suppose 
I turn this room to a little shop. Madame Justine 
serves thy bread and makes her coffee, and for ten 
cents they get a big piece and a cup that would put 
heart into them and money into thy pocket and my 
pocket, and help to get the wages home to their chil- 
dren besides. What does thee say ? ’ 

‘‘ ‘ I say,’ say Denis, ‘ that thou art like a brother,’ 


134 


CORPORAL JUSTINE'S STORY. 


and he throw his arms round his neck and kiss him; 
and that man stare and push him away and say: ‘ Is 
thee crazy? ’ 

“ And bime-by the little shop is ready, and the 
counter and the cups and saucers and plates and 
knives; and I get some little white curtains and some red 
geraniums, and I put on my black dress and white cap, 
and Denis put on his white hat and apron — ah, he was 
beautiful, my Denis ! — and the door is open, and 
when that angelus of the workmen ring, how they 
crowd into the little shop ! 

“‘From that day the money roll in, and in six 
months monsieur he say: ‘ We make dividend; ’ and 
there is money to put into the bank for us instead of 
spending. 

“ Eh bien ! then one day the bells toll, the factories 
don’t work, and the people stand in great mass, and 
bime-by the train come in from the South, and a great 
noise of shouting comes from the gare — the station — 
and some one say: ‘ War is declared,’ and after that all 
things change. 

“ The crowds come more than ever to the little 
shop. They drink more coffee and eat more bread; 
they pay more money, and they talk war, war, war ; 
and the drill-sergeants tap their drums all day, and the 
men fight for place to enroll themselves first ; the flags 
fly, and bime-by Denis he begin to get very quiet. 
He think, think, and he don’t joke with the men at 
midday. And one night monsieur he say to Denis: 
‘ What crotchet is thee got in thy head now? ’ 

“ And Denis shrug his shoulders and say nothing. 
But he go on think, think, and at last he say: 

“ ‘ About this war, monsieur, what’s the trouble ?’ 

“ Monsieur say: ‘ Some say one thing, some say an- 


CORPORAL JUSTINE'S STORY. 135 

other tiling; but the real reason of the trouble is the 
slavery — that must go out.’ 

“ But Denis say; ‘ The slaves they do belong to 
their masters.’ 

“‘Yes,’ say monsieur, ‘ but the Slave States did 
agree that no more States but themselves should have 
slavery, and that agreement was broke, and now the 
country divides itself.’ 

“ ‘ Do you go to the war, monsieur ? ’ 

“ ‘ No,’ say monsieur, ‘Quakers cannot fight; but, 
to hold this land together, I will spend all the money 
I have raising soldiers.’ 

“ ‘ Monsieur,’ say Denis, ‘ me, I go. This land have 
been good stepmother to me; she have put friends and 
money into my hands, and to help her I go to the 
war.’ 

“ I give one great cry, but monsieur he go to Denis 
and take him by the shoulders and say: 

“ ‘ Thee is a fnan, and I love thee as if thee was my 
brother.’ 

“And then there is a darkness, for I faint a'way; 
and in the night-time, when I come to myself, I hear 
always the voice of my Denis, ‘ I go to the war,’ and 
I see the battle-field with him wounded and nobody to 
help, and I see the hospital and him sick with nobody 
to nurse, and I see myself sitting in the little shop with 
no Denis and wait, wait, waiting for the telegraph that 
don’t come, the letter that don’t come, and then the 
news that maybe one day does come that my Denis is 
killed. And I say: non., he shall not go ! ’ 

“But I feel a hand on mine, and Denis say: ‘Yes, 
Justine, it is a duty;’ and then I say no more, for with 
Denis a duty is a thing to die for. But I think, think, 
and when the day is come I go about and into the' 


136 CORPORAL JUSTINE'S STORY. 

shop, and I say the Memorare again and again for a 
way out of it all. And the men talk to Denis, and 
there in that little shop one hundred men enroll them- 
selves, and monsieur he is so please he say: ‘ I fit you 
all out, and I give you your battery;’ for it is as can- 
noneers they are to go. 

‘‘ Then one of the men, a young boy, throw his cap 
into the air and say: ‘ Hurrah ! ’ and turn to me and 
say: ‘Oh, Madame Justine, I so sorry you can’t come 
too ! ’ 

“ Like a stroke of the lightning comes the answer to 
my Memorares, and I say, just like I been knowing 
all the time: 

“ ‘ I am going.’ 

“ Then they make great staring and talking and 
noise, and Denis he say: 

“ ‘But, Justine ! ’ 

“ And I say: ‘ But, Denis ! You know in France 
every regiment has its vivandiere.’ 

“ ‘Yes,’ flung back Denis, ‘but she is ’ and he 

use a word not pretty, and not always just to those 
vivandieres. And I say: 

“ ‘ Well, Denis, the one that is going with your regi- 
ment was raised by the Ladies of the Rue de Barouil- 
lere, the Helpers of the Holy Souls, and she is going 
to try to be a help to the regiment and not a scandal.’ 

“ And Denis he come close to me, and he bend down 
his head, and the tears are in his eyes, and he say: 

“ ‘ Little Justine, forgive thy Denis; his heart is sore 
to think of thy going into danger and hardships.’ 

“ And I laugh, because if I do not I will cry before 
all those men, and I say: 

“ ‘ Well, messieurs, when you go to march, remem- 
ber, I go too.’ And they cheer and hurrah, and then 


CORPORAL JU SPINELS STORY, 1 37 

the days are full of hurry and crowding and noise and 
drilling, and the shop is crowded more and more. 

“ But I go to the hospital every time I can, and ask 
the doctors how to make lint and bandage wounds, 
and so I get ready too, me. 

“And day by day I talk to Denis and tell him how I 
must go \ and bime-by, when the train rolls out to the 
South with the regiment and the cannons, I go 
too. 

“We go to the front where the fighting is already, 
and it is heart-breaking to see the men killed, and it is 
awful to hear the noise of the obus [shells] and the 
roar of the big guns ; but I can help here with brandy, 
or a bandage, or a prayer, and often I have baptize the 
poor boys as they died, and so there are comforts too. 

“Afraid? Oh yes; but I look at my Denis always, 
and he so gay, so cheerful, so laughing, so singing, they 
call him ‘the French lark,’ and then I say: ‘Steady, 
Justine, thou art his wife.’ And then I get so busy 
helping our boys that I forget the obus and the danger. 

“ Sometimes I help the other men, the men of the 
enemy, and they are so brave, so polite, so willing to 
die for their flag, my mind is confuse. One day I say 
to an old officer who is dying : 

“ ‘ But, monsieur, why make rebellion against the 
government ? See what ruin, what death it bring.’ 

“ He drew up his gray head like a king and say: 
‘ Ma bonne, the States are sovereign, and sovereign 
States cannot rebel. We fight for our homes and our 
constitutional rights.’ He talk in French to me, and 
just precisely those words he say to me. And as he say 
them the Southern men make a new charge, and their 
shouts come to him ; he raise himself up, and his hand 
that was on his sword grip it and bring it to a salute. 


133 CORPORAL JUSTINE'S STORY. 

and he say low: ‘ 1 die for my country,’ and immedi- 
ately he does die, for he is shot through the body. 

“ Then I tell Denis, and he nod his head and say: 
‘Yes, that is what makes this war so hard; our side 
k7iow we right, their side believes they right. A war of 
brothers, that is terrible ! ’ 

“One day the battle has last all day on the front of the 
line, and without any warning the Southern men break 
through the woods at our back and charge the battery. 

“ Denis and the others they work like crazy men. 
They turn those guns round, and they fight like they 
are inspired; but the boys get shot so fast I think: ‘ We 
all die here.’ 

“ Ah, if the good God had only permitted it! 

“But non. It is bime-by my Denis that throw up 
his hands and fall, and as he go he call: ‘ Mind the 
guns, Justinette.’ 

“ And I jump up from the side where I help the 
poor boys, and I catch the rammer from his hand and 
say ‘ Yes,’ and I ram home the powder and ball, and 
I help mind those guns till the boys must limber up 
and retreat. 

“ Oh, then I ’most die ! 

“ I say : ‘ I stay with my Denis ; save yourselves, 
you.’ 

“ But they : say ‘ No, Denis is dead ’ ; and the boy 
that say first he wisli I could come to the war say: 
‘Madame Justine, Denis have say, “Mind those 
guns.” ’ 

“ And then I turn and mount, and as I go I call 
back: ‘Adieu, Denis; I will mind those guns till I die.’ 

“And always, always, with the boys and those 
guns I go to battle; for when the officer say something 
about new men for the battery, the sub-officer say : 


CORPORAL JUSTINE'S STORY, 1 39 

‘“Not for this place. Madame Justine is better 
than any other.’ 

“ And one day our corporal gets killed, and when 
they say who to make in his place, the boys all say: 
‘ Madame Justine.’ 

“ The commission comes just before peace is de- 
clared, and so when the battery is mustered out I say 
to the colonel : 

“ ‘ I must have those guns, for I promise my Denis 
to mind them till I die.’ 

“ And he look up and he look down, and then he 
say: ‘ 1 must see the general.’ 

“ And the general say he cannot do it without an 
order; so the colonel he say he will ask for that order, 
and he make a statement, and the officers sign it, and 
bime-by the answer comes. The government will not 
sell its guns; but if I give bond to take care of them 
and give them back when they are asked for, I may 
have charge of them, for they make me not a dis- 
charged but a retired soldier. 

“Then I sit down and think where I’ll take those 
guns. 

“ If I go back to the little shop, they must be stored 
away, and that is not taking care of them. And while 
I sit and think it comes back to me like a flood, the 
memory of the hundreds and thousands of men killed in 
that war, and how many is killed with those guns. 
It was service, yes; but the men are dead all the 
same. 

“ So I think I go some place where I can pray like 
my Ladies in France — pray all the time, for my Denis 
first, and for all those dead men aprh. And I know 
there is no place so good as the house of religion. 

“ And I look here and I look there, and when 


140 CORPORAL JUSTINE'S STORY. 

I see the ramparts of Glen Mary I know the place is 
found. 

“ I go to the Mother and I tell tell her all, and say 
I wish to come and work like a lay-sister, but I must 
bring my guns and must wear my coat with the chev- 
rons; and after a while she thinks and says: ‘I must 
ask the bishop. Stay here until he comes.’ And I stay. 

“ Oh, mes enfants, it is heaven to hear the choir 
of Sisters instead of the roar of the camp ; to hear the 
silence of the woods, with the little song of the water, 
instead of the thunder of the guns ! And I stay, for 
the bishop say: 

“ ‘ God bless you, and may He grant you one day a 
meeting with your Denis in paradise ! ’ ” 

Elsie’s eyes were overflowing, and Jinsie and 
Polly were swallowing balls in their throats, as she 
finished; but Dolores crouched forward with brilliant 
eyes, and Gwen breathed so noisily it was easy to 
see why she was called the Porpoise. But none of 
them spoke until Elsie leaned towards her and said : 

“ Thank you. Corporal Justine. Whenever we hear 
Mass now we will pray for your Denis and his com- 
rades, and to-morrow when we go to communion we’ll 
offer it for them.” 

Justine, who had been gazing far across the sky, 
turned with a smile that was almost radiant on the 
gentle child, who, with the heavenly instinct of a pure 
soul, had chosen the one consoling thing to say to that 
faithful mourning heart. 

“ It’s the finest thing I ever heard,” gulped Polly, 
“ next to Smallwood’s battalion at Long Island. It’s a 
beau\.\iw\ story,” and with a strange touching grace she 
bent and kissed the grimy hand which Justine drew 
away with a startled exclamation of : 


CORPORAL JUSTINE'S STORY. I4I 

“ Not that, cherie ! ” 

‘‘Yes,” answered Polly, that j for Jack says the 
beautifiillest hands in the world are the hands that 
do their duty; and he kisses mamma’s hands often, 
’cause he says that’s the way to treat hands like that. 
And whatever Jack says and does is, just the best in 
the whole world, and don’t you forget it.” 

Dolores and Gwen in turn added their “ Thank 
you ” with unmistakable fervor; but Jinsie — tricksy, 
volatile, chattering Jinsie — never said a word, just sat 
gazing after Justine as she walked away, with her lips 
parted, her breath coming in quick little gasps, and 
the vein in her throat hammering like a trip. Her ex- 
traordinary silence finally attracted general attention, 
and Gwen’s eyes got rounder than ever, Dolores looked 
amazed, Polly began a very fair imitation of a war- 
dance, singing as she solemnly hopped about : 

“ Wait! See the skies fall down. 

Wait! See the prairies roll away. 

Wait! See the rivers dry up. 

For Jinsie’s lost her tongue.” 

But Elsie, after watching her for a moment, slipped 
her hand into the hot twitching one of her odd chum 
and said : 

“ Let’s walk down to the brook, girls, before the 
bell rings for dinner. It’s getting too warm to stay 
here.” 

And there, when the other three had paddled into 
the water, she and Jinsie sat silently under the two 
great pines that stood like the seven-branched candle- 
sticks of Jerusalem on the slope of the hill. • 

A light summer wind rustled their needles, and the 
soft brawling of the brook accompanied the sound. 
At last Jinsie drew a long breath and said : 


142 


POLLY'S VISITORS, 


“ And she’s prayed for ’em all this timed Let’s 
see : 1864 to ’74, to ’84, to ’94 — that’s thirty years. 
And they say on All Souls and the Annunciation she 
has permission to stay all night in the chapel, and I 
suppose that’s just what for — to pray for those souls. 
What a lot of them there must be now, Elsie ! ” 

“ Lot of what, dear ? ” 

“ Souls waiting for her — the ones she has helped. 
And — and — I’ve never thought of ’em once ! What 
a great thing it will be for her when she dies to have 
all those people praying for her ! ” 

And although the dinner-bell put an end to their 
talk, and although Jinsie gradually recovered her fan- 
tastic gayety before night, she always after that treated 
Corporal Justine with a certain consideration and a 
respect that she gave to few ; and many a time next 
term when she and Elsie slipped into the chapel for 
the few minutes’ private devotion the Catholic girls 
always took from their play-time, the latter noticed it 
was the Litany for the Dead she was saying or the 
Penitential Psalms, and she knew it was for Denis and 
his comrades that they were offered. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


POLLY'S VISITORS. 

holidays fairly flew by for Polly, somewhat to 



her surprise ; for when Jack wrote word that he 
and Elizabeth were coming East and were going to 
spend the summer in Maryland, picking her up as they 
passed, she gave one long homesick sigh for the dearly 
remembered charms of “Severn Reach,’’ and then — 
dismissed them absolutely from her mind in her ec- 


POLLY'S VISITORS. 


143 


Static delight at the thought of seeing her father and 
mother again. 

She did not know what the Chesapeake was like 
when she thought of the ranch as the loveliest place 
in the world ; but at the earliest whiff of the salt all 
of Jack’s sailing instinct and knowledge revived, and 
her first few cruises with him converted her to “ sailor- 
ing ” for the rest of her life. 

The great stretch of dancing water with its shift- 
ing lights, its rolling waves, its catspaws, its mirror-like 
calms fascinated her ; and when she and Jack (dressed 
in oilskins) were crouching down on the side of the 
Flying Scud with the 'water pouring over the rail and 
the spray flying in a cloud on each side of them, she 
was a sight to see. 

Then there were crabbing, fishing, and trolling ; and 
in September some shooting— to the disapproval of a 
few severe aunts, but the boundless admiration of all 
the men and boys of the clan, even “Sulky Jimmie,” 
who had never been known to praise anything in petti- 
coats in all the fifty years of his life. 

Then there was the companionship of the girls of 
the clan ; and the rowing, riding, and dancing parties, 
in which the young fry were always included ; and 
the ever-dear delight of seeing Jack pushed to the 
front, honored, loved, and looked up to, and of seeing 
that Elizabeth was prettier than any of the other 
mothers — yes, even prettier than Achsah Frick, who 
was home at the old Hall with her very first baby. 

And then there were the babies of the clan, fourteen 
of them, all housed in the Hall and the Grange, and 
these were an amusement of which she never tired. 
From their morning bath to their little cribs at night she 
admired them unweariedly, to the gratification of the 


144 


POLLY'S FIS/TOPS. 


mothers, the pride of the fathers, and so much to their 
own satisfaction that whenever she appeared where 
they were she looked a little like St. Caecilia and her 
cloud of attendant cherubs. 

But now the holidays were over, and the very last 
good-by had been said to the kin in Maryland, and to 
Jack and Elizabeth in the once formidable grated 
parlor. For Elizabeth coiild not go home without a 
glimpse of the convent and the Sisters and girls who 
had become such an essential part of Polly’s life, even 
though it cost a thirty-six hours’ difference of time in 
their Western trip. That, however, she counted as 
nothing, and was not only absolutely satisfied, but well 
pleased with, and in some instances enthusiastic about, 
everything she saw. Only one drawback existed — 
Mother Ottilia was away; and she had been especially 
anxious to meet the wonderful little lady about whom 
Polly’s tongue wagged so incessantly. Sister Con- 
stance, however, was Mother J>ro tern., and of her 
Polly had spoken with such reverence and affection 
that she was even more interesting to Elizabeth, be- 
cause so evidently the strongest of the new in- 
fluences. 

Of the four chums she thought well ; but while she 
and Jack both approved and appreciated Elsie’s dainty 
loveliness and gentleness (“ She’s a little like you were, 
honey,” was Jack’s high praise), they were both drawn 
to Jinsie irresistibly; and that young person responded 
so directly and so cordially that when Polly turned 
away from the last glimpse of the carriage as it drove 
off, and began to fumble blindly for her handkerchief, 
she felt a pair of wiry arms around her neck and a 
head plumped down on her shoulder, while a voice 
that could belong only to Jinsie said brokenly : 


POLLY'S VISITORS. 


145 


“ I f-f-feel ’m-m-most as badly as you do, P-p-polly! 
They certainly are a pair of delicious Delectables ! ” 

A few days sufficed to re-establish the usual routine, 
but a longer time was necessary for the Pentagon to 
exchange all the happenings of the holidays. Polly and 
Jinsie had the longest stories to tell; Elsie the most 
brilliant, for her youngest uncle had taken her on a 
ten-weeks’ spin through England, Ireland, and Scot- 
land, with a passing glimpse at several famous water- 
falls in Wales that had not a vowel between them ; 
Gwendolen’s summer had been spent miserably at Bar 
Harbor, except for the Saturdays when her father 
could come for a short visit, and they could devote 
the days to sailing and scrambling over the rocks, 
while Mrs. Jubbins sat on the piazza and bemoaned 
herself as une fe7nme incomprise and plaintively de- 
manded the sympathy of everybody in sight when she 
saw Gwendolen’s nose and her husband’s cheeks burnt 
to a fiery red and peeling in patches. 

“ As if they were both not hideous enough already! ” 
she would sigh. But in private she raged, until with 
one final tragic sob : “ And you — you, Gwendolen, 
with that awful head! ” she would fall into hysterical 
weeping that would reduce poor Gwen to tears. 

One day, however, it brought her the happiest 
memory of the summer, for as she dashed out of the 
room to bring help she collided with Mrs. Muirhead, 
the prettiest woman in the place and what Mrs. 
Jubbins called “the most truly distinguee'' As soon 
as she recovered her breath she accepted Gwen’s in- 
coherent apologies, and regarded with some curiosity 
the convulsed and crumpled figure of Mrs. Jubbins as 
revealed through the open door. 

“ Lizette,” she said to her maid, “give me my wrap, 


146 


POLLY'S VISLTORS. 

and do what you can to help in there.” Then turning 
to Gwen she added : 

“ You come with me, and let Lizette manage her, for 
it’s a case of nerves.” 

And she took her off to her own beautiful rooms, 
where she gave her a bottle of benzoin and rose-water 
for her burns and a better balm for her heart, by then 
and there beginning a friendship that meant much 
more of a compliment to the young girl than she was 
able to appreciate until years later. 

Dolores had spent the summer at the convent as 
usual, but had wonderful tales to tell of Montrose and 
Dundee; for Polly had left them in her care, and she had 
played with them so much she almost had rosy cheeks. 

One afternoon the recreation-bell had just rung 
when Belle Brady shouted : 

“ Visitors for Polly Worthington ! ” And as Polly 
jumped up and started for the parlor, Marie Van 
Houten called : 

“ What’s that. Belle ? Did you say they were Buf- 
falo Bill’s cowboys ? Some of Miss Worthington’s 
relations I — ah — presume.” 

Belle flushed up a bit; for although the two men she 
had left seated in the parlor were not dressed in buck- 
skin with an arsenal or two of guns belted round their 
waists, they were somewhat suggestive of Colonel Cody 
and his “Wild West,” and the lad with them was un- 
doubtedly an Indian. 

Marie, noticing Belle’s glance toward Polly, went on: 
“ The Show’s in town now, you know. Perhaps they 
are her — ah — brothers. These Western people are apt 
to have half-breed relations, they are so common;” 
and with a little affected shudder she turned back to 
her circle of followers. 


POLLY'S VISITORS. 


147 


Polly’s eyes flashed. 

“ Is that so?” she drawled. “Well, I reckon we are 
not as elegant, perhaps, as those people you told about 
in New York — the ones that made their money trading 
pelts and then got ashamed of the skins.” 

“ Oh, Polly! ” said Sister Loretto, who was passing 
at the moment. 

“ I know. Sister,” half-laughed Polly; “ but she’s a 
patent aggravator.” 

Then she skimmed down the passage, and when she 
opened the parlor door and saw the two tall fellows 
and the slender youth who rose as she entered, she 
uttered a delighted cry: 

“ Oh, Texas and Dick, how glad I am to see you 
both! ” and she shook hands until they blushed like 
boys to think their little queen should give them such 
a welcome. 

“ Here’s somebody else from home, too,” they said 
at last, turning to the lad who stood quietly by. 

“ Who is it ? ” asked Polly. “ Is it — why, it’s Little 
Elk!” and she held out both hands and began to gabble 
some of the sentences he had taught her in the cold 
winter at Severn Reach. 

His face lit up. “ Little Medicine-woman have 
good heart, good head.” 

“Just you all wait a minute,” said Polly after a few 
moments’ animated talk. “ I want to tell Mother and 
Sister Stephanie you are here; I want them to see two 
of our boys and one of our band.” And she flashed off 
to the Directress’ room, where, by good chance. Mother 
had halted on her way back to the community house. 

“ Oh, Mother darling! oh. Sister Stephanie! ” began 
Polly, breathlessly, “ I am so glad you are together! I 
want please for you both to come to the parlor right 


148 


POLLY'S VISITORS. 


away. Please do, for two of our boys are there, Texas 
and Dakota Dick, and Little Elk’s there too — he be- 
longed to Grizzly Bear’s band, and I do want you to 
see them.” 

Mother Constance was a stately lady, who had borne 
a great name worthily in the world before she entered 
the cloister, and somehow — as I have said — of all the 
people Polly had met since she left home she felt most 
strongly drawn to this dignified religious of whom the 
other girls stood in distinct awe. Now she pitched 
herself at her feet and flung her strong young arms 
around her in what was an unmistakable hug. 

“ Gently, gently,” said Mother. “ Let me under- 
stand about this. You want us to come with you to 
see some friends of yours?” 

“ Yes, Mother. They are two of papa’s cow-punch- 
ers — herders, and an Indian boy that was one of my 
playmates. Texas taught me the Cossack drill, and 
Dakota taught me how to shoot. And I want them to 
see the two teachers I’ve got now I' 

And Mother turned and said to the Directress: “We 
will go for a few minutes ” — which was “ dear ” of her, 
as Polly said, for the names and descriptions left her 
somewhat puzzled as to what she would see. 

What she did see was a pair of long-limbed, straight- 
backed young men about twenty-six or -eight, quietly 
dressed, with broad-rimmed felt hats and long waving 
hair, and with manners differing only from those of 
other young men by being a little more deferential ; 
and the equally tall, straight young Sioux with a face 
like a Roman medal, who wore the quiet uniform of 
the frontier mounted scouts, and whose manners were 
as grave as his face. 

Texas and Dakota Dick were a little embarrassed 


POLLY'S VISITORS. 


149 


to make talk with the gentle nuns, but they looked at 
them with such clear eyes, and responded so eagerly 
to their politeness, that Mother’s manner was wonder- 
fully attractive. 

“ Will you tell me, please, ma’am, what I must call 
you? You see you’re the first nun I ever saw,” said 
Texas after a prolonged survey. 

“ Call me Mother, as the others do,” she answered 
kindly. 

“ I will; you bet I will. It’s a mighty good-sound- 
ing name to a fellow that’s knocked around all by his 
little lonesome ever since he was an eight-year-old. 
And/’ he added with discriminating gallantry, respect- 
ful enough, but a little startling, “ I don’t know as ever 
I see a mother I’d like to adopt better. You just fill 
the bill.” 

And before Mother quite recovered from this 
unique compliment, he went on: 

“ We were wondering what we could do for our 
Major-General there,” and he beamed affectionately 
and proudly on Polly. “ We’d like to take her out 
and give her a big time, and we’d like it to be the 
kind of a time a way-up-in-G lady ought to have, for 
if she is a kid she’s Jack Worthington’s daughter, 
and we’d just let her walk on us with both feet if she 
wanted to, and sell us out for hide and tallow if she 
felt like it. What had we better do, hey. Mother ? ” 

Mother followed as well as she could the idioms of 
her vis-a-vis^ and then asked: 

“ What had you thought of doing ? ” 

“ We wanted to begin with the Wild West Show. 
Cody’s got a good show, the stock’s first-rate, and 
some of the boys are in it that come to the round-ups 
every year at Severn Reach. We thought it would 


POLLY'S FIS I POPS. 


150 

look kind of homesome to her. Little Elk’s brother’s 
in it, too, and some of the band that were with Sitting 
Bull and Rain-in-the-Face on the Little Big Horn. 
Say, can’t you go ? can’t we take the whole outfit, kids 
and all ? ” 

But Mother gently explained that she and her nuns 
never left the enclosure except by order on commu- 
nity business, whereupon Texas drew a long breath, 
and said “ Gee-whiz ! ” — under his breath to be sure, 
but he was so shocked that he coughed himself scarlet 
in the face. She also told him she could not let the 
whole school go, but she would be glad if Polly could 
have the pleasure. “ Have you permission from Mr. 
Worthington ? ” 

“ Oh yes, ma’am — Mother, I mean. I forgot all 
about that.” And he drew forth a letter the gist of 
which was: “ If they want to take her about a bit and 
it does not interfere with the rules, you can safely give 
permission, for I’d trust my little daughter with them 
anywhere. However, as they are a trifle reckless and 
thoroughly unconventional, perhaps if you let a few 
of Polly’s chums go, and a Sister in charge of all of 
them, the sight-seeing will be more wisely conducted.” 

“ Yes, Mr. ” 

“ If I’m going to call you Mother,” he said, taking 
the title at full value and not “ officially,” “ you’ll 
just please, ma’am, call me ‘ Texas,’ like the rest of 
’em do to tell me from that galoot yonder,” and he 
bobbed a friendly head towards Dakota Dick, who 
was busy answering questions about every colt, calf, 
and puppy that had been born since Polly left 
home. 

“ I will call you Richard; for while Texas is the 
name of a noble State, and, like all Americans, I ‘ re- 


POLL Y ’ 5 FIS/ TOPS. 1 5 1 

member the Alamo,’ I like better the name by which 
you were baptized.” 

“ All right, ma’am, suit yourself. It was one of 
your own brand gave it to me — a missionary that come 
along when I was choking to death with croup, and 
christened me first and rubbed me with goose-grease 
next, and saved my life.” 

“ Who was it ? ” asked Mother, instantly interested. 

“ Now you’re too many for me,” said Texas, wrink- 
ling his nose into a triangle in the effort to remember, 
“ I couldn’t really say, but it sounds like Vinegar.” 

Wenniger ! ” exclaimed Mother ; and, turning on 
him a look such as Texas had never received before 
in all his life, she said: “ I will call you ‘ my son’ 
now, and pray for you every day; for you are one of 
us, and it was a saint who baptized you into the 
Church.” 

Then she said, with the fine manner the habit could 
not hide: “Saturday is our half-holiday. I must bid 
you good-by now; but if you will come early that 
day, we will arrange about Polly’s holiday.” 

Then she and the Directress went back to their 
duties, and the four oddly assorted friends talked 
until the quarter-to-five bell rang, and Polly, like 
Doctor Blimber’s young gentlemen, “ resumed her 
studies.” 

When it became known that Polly was to make up 
a party for the Wild West Show, the excitement was 
intense; politeness and pie, courtesy and cake, oranges 
and olive-branches were freely tendered, but Polly 
held her way as usual, and as usual did her own 
choosing, complex reasons governing her choice. 

Of course the Pentagon got the first invitations. 
Then she asked Sarah Jane Perkins, because she 


152 


POLLY'S VISITORS, 


never had anything — presents, letters, or holidays; 
then Henrietta Lowndes, because she was from Mary- 
land (the Eastern Shore), and her family and Jack’s 
had been friends for two hundred and fifty years ; 
then Mississippi Quitman, because she was so home- 
sick for the plantation with its wide ranges, its pet 
horses, its dogs, her twenty or thirty cousins who 
lived with them or on their own adjoining places as 
suited their fancy; and the father and mother whom 
she loved with the clinging fondness of a little child, 
and for whom she used to cry until she would be sent 
off to Sister Aloysius at the infirmary to be petted as 
much as nursed. 

Then she asked Julia Kintner, because they had 
quarrelled and made up, and she wanted to show 
she really forgave her; Helen Hartsock, because she 
helped her over a stiff place in her “derivatives;” 
Pogie (Margaret) Preston, because she was a con- 
genial soul when it came to the code and any pleasant 
bit of mischief, and “ The Twinses,” because she 
didn’t know which one of them she had invited the 
day they came out thin and interesting from the 
mumps, but then she never could tell them apart, 
and indeed no one could. 

Finally she went up to the “ big girls ” end of the 
play-room one evening and said to Annie Lee — her 
pet admiration — “ Miss Lee, I want to speak to you, 
please.” And when she answered cordially: “Cer- 
tainly; what do you want, little Viking’s Daughter ?” 
Polly said: 

“ I want you to go to the Wild West with me.” 

“ That’s very kind of you, and I shall like it im- 
mensely,” was the ready response. 

“ And, Miss Lee,” continued Polly, “ I know it would 


POLLY'S VLSI TORS. 


153 


be lonesome for you with just us all, and I kept a 
place so you could invite the friend you wanted most 
to go.” 

“ Why, little Polly, what a big heart you have, and 
how gracefully you do a favor ! ” exclaimed Annie, 
surprised and touched by her thoughtfulness. “ I 
should dearly love to ask Violet Blair.” 

“I thought so,” said Polly, “ and I’m glad. I like 
her. She shoots straight.” 

“ She ” 

“Oh, that s just one of our sayings out home, and 
means she’s on the square — there, that’s another,” and 
her merry little laugh tinkled out. 

But alas, alas ! the party did not come off. The 
morning of the day an easterly gale swept up country, 
the wind blew, and the clouds trooped in endless ranks 
from seaward, each darker, colder, wetter than the last, 
the tree-tops whirled in the gusts, and the eyes of some 
of the chosen fourteen closely resembled the weather. 

But Marie and her followers openly rejoiced, and 
she declared to all who would listen that she did not 
believe Polly was going in the first place, but that she 
had got up all the excitement just to make herself 
popular, winding up with : 

“ I’m glad to see her taken down; she’s an imper- 
tinent minx wdio needs a good sound trouncing. It’s 
all I can do to keep from boxing her ears sometimes.” 

“ I’d advise great self-restraint in that direction. Miss 
Van Houten,” said a sweet but cutting voice; and, 
turning with a start, she saw at her elbow Annie Lee 
and Violet Blair, both looking at her with an expres- 
sion that made her wince; for the dearest object of 
her little ambition was to compass the friendship, even 
the toleration, of these two leaders of the school. 


154 


POLLY'S VISITORS. 


“ Oh ! ” she said, with that artificial laugh that 
sounded so more than unattractive from young lips, 
“ how you both startled me ! Of course I was joking, 
although I do think she needs polish dreadfully; don’t 
you ? She’s so Western." 

“ If by Western you mean big-hearted, generous, 
devoted to her friends, and true as steel, then I should 
say she is very Western. As to polish, even a dia- 
mond’s none the worse for that. And our Polly’s one 
of the first water.” 

The tone was more than the words, and they passed 
on leaving her thoroughly discomfited. Like all 
small natures, however, she put it to Polly’s account 
instead of trying to correct her own defect. 

But, although the storm raged, out through it all 
came the faithful Dicks, and with them the herders 
and Little Elk and his brother; for the Show itself 
was broken up for the afternoon by the violence of 
the gale. 

Nothing short of a prairie-fire, however, would have 
prevented “the boys ” from getting a glimpse of their 
Major-General; so they telephoned the hour of start- 
ing, and on the dot of time dashed up the driveway in 
their best style. In front of the porch they drew up 
in line, fired the salute, and gave the yell simulta- 
neously, to the huge delight of the assembled school 
and the no small dismay of some of the Sisters. 

They were dressed in their buckskins and armed to 
the teeth, while the Otter was figged out in his war- 
bonnet and other paraphernalia: and one might imag- 
ine they were embarrassing visitors; but they were not, 
for Mother rose to the occasion and had the dripping 
men shown right into Sister Justinian’s spotless kitchen, 
where the big ranges and the roaring fireplaces soon 


POLLY'S VIS /TOPS. 


155 


dried them, and where they were given big pots of 
hot coffee and ginger-cakes that warmed their hearts 
for more reasons than one, not the least being the 
“ heavy hand ” with which the ginger and molasses 
had been mixed. 

Old Cobden took the horses round to the stables, 
where he fell into such an ecstasy over their beauty 
that he unconsciously pushed his hat back until it 
hung by three hairs, spread his heels very far apart, 
thrust his hands in his pockets, and began chewing a 
straw in the identical stable-way he had when he was 
stud-groom in the old country and laid every pound 
he owned — and many he didn’t — on the races. 

And Mother saw them all herself for a short while, 
feeling a little amused at the proprietary air with 
which Texas Dick introduced her to the others, and 
a little touched by the eager pleasure in the rather 
hard young face as he talked with her. 

She felt more touched when he produced from the 
kitchen a paper box dropping to pieces with the wet, and 
lifted out great long sprays of roses and handed them 
to her, saying: “ The Major-General said I couldn’t 
bring you anything for yourself ’cause you swear to be 
too poor to take presents when you come here, but I 
could bring you these for your gospel- shop — meeting- 
house, I mean.” 

This was a signal for a general production of boxes 
and parcels; and when she saw the fruit, the candy, 
the cakes that were brought forth and presented to 
Polly, she trembled for the health of the school, for 
there was enough to jeopardize it for several days. 

Then Texas begged, as some sort of a comfort for 
the disappointment they had all had, to take Polly and 
her friends to the circus the next half-holiday, for 


156 


THE CIRCUS. 


“ The Biggest Show on Earth ” was to be in the town 
near by for three days, “ and they do say, Mother, that 
the elephants are uncommon fine; there’s twenty of 
’em, and three rings, and a Mazeppa, and a regular 
Hagenback show of wild beasts,” he concluded. 

And Mother, fortifying herself with the memory of 
Jack’s letter, consented; and so the clouds rolled from 
both horizons, and Wednesday dawned in such a 
splendor of sunshine that it seemed as though special- 
ly arranged for their enjoyment. 

Sister Bernard went with them, a soncy, ruddy-faced 
out-door Sister, whose common-sense made her one of 
the standbys of the community; and when they were 
all packed in the four-horse omnibus “ the boys ” had 
brought, Mother felt her anxieties were much lessened 
by the look in the sensible gray eyes, and the expres- 
sion of the pleasant, resolute features that smiled 
good-by. 


CHAPTER XV. 

THE CIRCUS. 


'P'HAT was a drive! 

Polly was wild with delight and effervesced in a 
dozen ways, Jinsie kept them in a giggle, and Pogie 
and Mississippi talked horses and dogs to the two 
“ boys,” until all feeling of strangeness wore off, and 
the light-hearted fellows enjoyed it as much as the 
children, and even Little Elk was seen to smile in a 
conservative way several times. 

To Annie Lee, Violet Blair, and Sister Bernard they 
showed the same deference that had won Mother’s 
good-will; and when the girls found their places were 


THE CIRCUS. 


157 


two whole rows of reserved seats in Section A, and 
that they could stroll around and see the animals 
at their leisure before the performance began, their 
satisfaction was great. 

Polly recognized several old friends — the grizzly, 
with his claws like blue steel and his fierce little eyes; 
the cinnamon-bear; a great buffalo, rusty and melan- 
choly with captivity; a puma, with his wicked jaw 
and crouching, treacherous gait; the panthers; and 
the dear little prairie-dogs, with their chums and 
house-companions, the small horned owls. And then 
came the familiar though unknown big game — the 
lions, the tigers, and the leopards ; the giraffes, the 
ostriches, and the rhinoceros; the hippopotamus and 
her funny, ungainly baby; and, finally, the elephants! 

There really were twenty, or, more accurately, nine- 
teen and a half, for the twentieth was not more than a 
year old, and looked and behaved like a frolicsome 
Saratoga trunk; his gambols sat strangely on him, for 
his wrinkled skin and uncannily wise eyes made him 
look about the age of his mamma, who stood like a 
lichen-covered rock without a sign of life beyond the 
tossing of bales of hay down her throat at stated in- 
tervals; but, like other mammas, she had eyes at the 
back of her head, for when his babyship strayed into 
mischief she knew just where to lay her trunk on him 
and haul him back to the path of rectitude and her 
own chain enclosure. 

His name was Casabianca, because every chance 
he got he was 

“ Eating peanuts by the peck,” 

and it looked well in the posters. 

When the girls were settled in their seats Texas got 


58 


THE CIRCUS. 


programmes, because for that favored section of the 
house there were programmes, and they were curi- 
osities — the adjectives all in the superlative, and ranks 
and platoons of exclamation-points. 

One paragraph in particular piqued their curiosity: 

“ Reciprocity our Motto ! ! ! 

“ If our patrons are generous to us, we are lavish to 
them! Not only are they delighted with positively 
THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, but every day one ab- 
solutely new and soul-thrilling specialty will be given 
that is not included in the printed programme ! 1 ! ! ! 

“ Look out for this phenomenally startling, this ab- 
normally surprising feature; and when you see it, own 
up, like the whole-souled ladies and gents you are, that 

“ WE can’t be BEAT !!!!!!!” 

They speculated, guessed, and chattered like mag- 
pies over it, and finally Polly said: 

“ They are going to begin now. Don’t let’s bother 
any more about it. We’ll just have to be surprised 
when it comes.” 

They were. My word but they were! 

The fanfare of trumpets, sounding like a herald’s 
summons, riveted their eyes on the opening that led 
from the “ greenroom ” of the big tent ; for out 
through it, mounted on beautiful horses and glittering 
in costumes of gorgeous colors, armor, and trappings, 
rode a cavalcade of fifty men and women, every two 
being dressed in some one of the styles that prevailed 
during the twenty-five decades which marked the most 
brilliant period of chivalry, when joustings and tour- 
neys were the highest forms of knightly and kingly 
amusement in France and England. They rode in a 
shining line, quickening the pace until at last they 


THE CIRCUS, 


159 


Streamed by like a splendid ribbon; then they broke 
into fours, sixes, and eights; then they rode en echelon^ 
the band meantime braying and crashing till the 
horses fairly danced. Then they whirled out of 
sight to give place to the Roman chariot-races. 

Hei ! but those women that drove the rattling 
cars had muscles ! And when they vanished in a cloud 
of tan-bark and glory, three figures leaped into the 
ring who did everything but fly, and the girls were 
scarcely sure they had not wings as they saw them 
tumbling, leaping, and whirling in midair, with noth- 
ing to stay them but the trapezes that dangled far 
above their heads, 

“ Oh, Texas,” said Polly, pinching the back of his 
hand hard in her excitement and interest, “isn’t it 
lovely ! Could we learn to do that next summer in 
one of the winter-barns ? ” 

But just then “ Signor Pototski and the Five Un- 
rivalled Horses of the Steppes, descended from the 
Five Mares of Mahomet,” came riding jauntily in on 
a gallant black, leading by silk ribbons four others of 
exactly the same size, but differing in color — dapple- 
gray, bay, pure white, and pied. He went around the 
ring once “ plain so,” as Polly said ; then he rode on 
one knee, airily throwing kisses to the audience ; then 
he stood erect with one foot in the air ; then he 
lowered that foot on the back of the next horse ; 
then lifting it again, he put it down on the back of 
the third. By this time the pace was tremendous, the 
horses running like one and snorting and tossing their 
heads as if they sniffed the sweet grass of the Saitch. 

Polly nodded an educated approval at Texas, say- 
ing : 

“ He rides as well as you do.” 


i6o 


THE CIRCUS. 


This ripened to admiration when the Signor in- 
cluded the fourth horse in his elastic reach ; but 
when he stretched his apparently endless legs and 
rode on the two outside horses, with the other three 
careering along under him, her admiration rose to en- 
thusiasm. 

Perhaps, however, the trick-mules and the educated 
elephants that drank tea, rang bells, and stood on 
their heads, rolled cylinders under their ponderous 
feet, and walked a tight-rope gave her the most 
amusement, or rather were giving her the best amuse- 
ment, when the “ soul-thrilling novelty not on the list ” 
occurred. 

It was after the procession of the elephants, which 
were covered with crimson, purple, blue, green, and 
orange saddle-cloths embroidered in tinsel and 
spangles, some with howdahs and some carrying 
mahouts more or less faithfully costumed. They 
had marched and countermarched, and after some 
solemn posing they had filed out, leaving the baby to 
sit in a gigantic baby-chair, dressed in a pinafore and 
with a cap on his head (which he soon shook over one eye 
in a droll fashion), drinking milk from a bottle the size 
of a demijohn. Now, whether the applause flew to 
his head, or whether little elephants have attacks of 
naughtiness like other young creatures, can never be 
determined ; but it is certain that when he swaggered 
off to make way for his elders and betters — the trick- 
elephants — he stayed by his mamma only long enough 
for his driver to get back into the ring, and then 
rolled softly from her side towards the menagerie- 
wagons ranged round the walls of the tent. Here he 
shuffled along, peering over the floor of the cages quite 
as though he were a visitor, until he reached the lion’s 


THE CIRCUS. 


l6l 


van, where he turned and trotted back to the puma’s 
cage, which was diagonally opposite his own home- 
stand. 

The graceful, vicious brute was lying near the front 
of the cage, snarling and growling, and by evil chance 
his tail depended a few inches through the bars. This 
seemed a delightful happening to Casabianca, who 
forthwith began to finger it gingerly with the tip of 
his trunk ; at this untimely moment his mamma 
opened her weather-eye, and, seeing he was in mis- 
chief, reached out and hauled home ; he instinctively 
grabbed for a support, and caught the puma’s tail 
with a sharp pinch. 

With a yell the startled brute leaped up (adding an- 
other jerk to the pull) and, shaking himself loose, 
hurled his full weight furiously again and again against 
the bars, which creaked ominously, sprung, and finally 
burst away from a rotten place in the woodwork with 
a rending, splitting sound that carried accurate knowl- 
edge of the disaster to two pairs of ears in our party. 

Little Elk was sitting where, through the canvas- 
way, he could command a partial view of the puma’s 
cage and a small portion of the elephant’s picket- 
line. The puma had attracted his trained eye early 
in the afternoon by its evident ill-humor and excite- 
ment, and, as the woodwork went, he was prepared 
for its leap toward the line of elephants, and with a 
quick look at Texas he said in Sioux : “ Puma loose! ” 

In the instant that followed, Casablanca’s mamma 
had thrust him between her front legs and, throwing up 
her trunk, trumpeted until every elephant joined her, 
even the trick-elephants in the ring, who stopped per- 
forming and began a rapid pounding from one foot 
to the other and a waving back and forth of their 


i 62 


THE CIRCUS. 


heads that made their drivers turn ashy and feel the 
points of their goads with desperate fingers. 

The lions and tigers yelled simultaneously, and be- 
fore that storm of sound the brute recoiled, crawled 
away a few feet, then with a noiseless, splendid bound 
it was in the ring, where it crouched, licking its chops 
and apparently picking out a quarry. 

Children commenced to cry, women to gasp hysteri- 
cally, men to grow pale, and a violent agitation began 
to heave up the surface of the enormous crowd, when 
one of the clowns, ghastly even under his paint, tum- 
bled to the front and shouted in a quavering falsetto : 
“ The surprise, ladies and gentlemen, the surprise ! 
Keep your seats and see the unique feature of the 
day’s entertainment.” He said afterwards that he 
fully expected that feature to be the killing and de- 
vouring of himself ; “ But what else could I do with 
all those kids and women there ? ” 

As if in response to his statement, there came leap- 
ing over the low wooden barrier Texas Dick, reach- 
ing back as lie ran. Little Elk followed, also reaching 
for his hip-pocket. Dakota took his cue from the 
clown and stood at the canvas flap of the doorway, 
whence in an inimitable drawl he said to a group of 
excited men who were trampling the people on the 
seats below in their effort to get out: 

“You all stop there, just right there^ else I’ll drop 
you — spoiling the surprise this a-way, and making the 
biggest show on earth break its word just for a lot of 
dope-eaters like you! ” And he shoved his revolver 
under their noses, until between the puma and the 
iron-jawed young face they felt they would rather 
risk the former. 

The band had stopped for the simple reason that 


THE CIRCUS. 


163 


with one exception their collective breath was taken 
away ; and horns and trombones, cornets and pic- 
colos broke off their melody and sat with their mouths 
open, so to speak, just like their owners. But, as the 
wild beast chorus was raging, this was not noticed by 
the audience at the moment, and the one exception — • 
a perfectly deaf old German — went serenely on to the 
end of his part. 

As Texas drew near the puma a breathless stillness 
settled on the audience. The performance in the two 
other rings became a mere pretence, and the tight- 
rope dancer high up among the pole-ropes stopped 
and sat down abruptly on her slender support, bend- 
ing perilously over to watch. 

In our party Sister Bernard took the two youngest 
children in her arms, and her lips moved fast in 
prayer. The “ Twinses” threw themselves into each 
other’s arms, hid their faces on each other’s necks, 
and — felt perfectly safe. Annie Lee and Violet Blair 
clasped each other’s hands. Jinsie, without a vestige 
of color, pitched herself head-first into Polly’s lap, 
where she burrowed like a young ostrich. Gwen- 
dolen threw her head up in the air and howled like a 
Skye terrier in dismal little yaps. Sarah Jane Perkins 
slipped through the seats and sat in the sawdust, 
afraid to move. Henrietta Lowndes covered her 
face and tried to say her prayers. Elsie prayed for 
Texas. But Polly and Dolores sat erect and unafraid, 
the first because she believed in the two Dicks — 
specially Texas— and little Elk so thoroughly there 
was no room for fear, and the latter because long 
generations of ancestors delighting in bull-fights had 
given her, if not a love, at least an eager interest in a 
struggle where a man was ranged on one side of the 


164 


THE CIRCUS, 


battle and a savage beast on the other. Her thin 
cheeks grew warm and red, her nostrils dilated, and 
her eyes enlarged and sparkled until the pale child 
was unrecognizable; and indeed she and Polly made 
such a brillant contrast that an artist near by — 
he had been a “ special ” during the Turco-Russian 
War and was used to snatching his pictures out of 
the fingers of death — sketched them with curious re- 
sults, as we will see later on. 

A short grov/1, followed by a long snarl, broke the 
silence, and a tightening of the muscles warned Little 
Elk the spring was coming, and he fired full at the 
puma’s side as it rose. A red spot sprung on the 
hide, but the great creature curved on through the 
air, receiving a bullet in the breast from Texas. It 
struck ground near another edge of the ring, where a 
whole lot of little orphans were seated, and Texas, 
because he saw the brute gathering for the death- 
spring, threw himself between it and the children, 
rushed on it, thrust his revolver into its gaping throaty 
and fired. 

The open jaws snapped on his arm like a bear-trap, 
and man and beast went down together, Texas un- 
derneath. 

The first person to reach him was the parish priest 
who had brought the orphans, and who, armed only 
with his umbrella, had leaped in front of his little 
charges with the wild thought of grappling with the 
beast until help could reach them. Now, through in- 
difference to danger or ignorance of the death-bed 
habits of wild beasts, he began hauling at the dead 
puma to drag him off of Texas. 

Meantime the band had started up full blast, the 
big audience were cheering like mad, the circus 


THE CIRCUS. 


165 

people were almost beside themselves with relief at 
the gallant rescue, and that end of the tent was a 
seething mass of agitated people and reporters. A 
cordon was formed around Texas, two stretchers were 
brought in, one for him and one for the puma ; for 
the happy thought had struck somebody to carry the 
latter in triumphal procession round the three rings to 
divert attention, while the doctors were working over 
Texas. 

He was a really terrifying sight, for the puma’s 
blood had burst from its throat and drenched him, 
his arm was lacerated and they feared broken, and 
three or four great rents were torn in clothes and 
flesh by the last convulsive movements of the claws. 

Sister Bernard and Polly were at his side as soon as 
possible, and to the latter’s eager “ He’s ours, sir,” 
the doctor had heartily answered: “ You ought to be 
proud of him, then, for he’s saved hundreds of lives 
this day. When I think,” he added, turning to Sister 
Bernard, “ how a panic would have resulted here, it 
makes me feel positively ill.” 

“ Is he much hurt ? ” asked Polly, her face working 
for the first time and her first tears rising. 

“ Yes,” said the doctor, “ but not dangerously. Get 
him home as quick as you can, and have him nursed 
carefully.” 

“ Home is at Severn Reach,” she answered, a little 
forlornly, for it seemed very, very far away. “Could 
he come to the convent. Sister ? ” 

“ I wish he could, my dear, but ” 

“ He’ll come to my house,” said the parish priest, 
who had left him only long enough to quiet the 
scared children. “ He’ll come to my house, and he’ll 
be well nursed and cared for there. I insist upon it,” 


THE CIRCUS. 


1 66 

he added as the doctor queried something about the 
‘‘ hospital.” 

“ That ends it,” said the doctor with a courtly bow; 

for when Father asks for anything, it is granted 

if possible ; when he insists, it has to be granted 
whether it is possible or not.” 

And Dick was carried into a quiet tent among the 
“ freaks ” to have his wounds properly dressed. The 
doctor and several volunteer assistants went with him, 
and the performance began again. 

Sister Bernard, after fishing Sarah Jane Perkins out 
of the sawdust, determined, with her usual good 
sense, to wait and let the minds of the children be 
diverted from the fright they had had ; but she told 
Dakota and Little Elk both to go with Texas, and that 
she would wait where she was until they came for her, 
or, if they were not able to get back in time, to station 
the omnibus on Peace Square and she and the chil- 
dren would find their way to it. 

Dancing horses, donkey- races, races by large dogs 
with monkeys for jockeys, trained dogs dressed in 
every fashion and doing all sorts of clever things, 
more skilled riding, and cannon-ball tricks did help to 
take the edge off of the adventure — and added a new 
element to the performances, for every horse, as it 
passed the spot where the puma died, shied so sharply 
at the smell of the blood that several acrobatic feats 
which were also “ not on the list ” were introduced, 
and fresh tan-bark and sawdust had to be sprinkled 
after every round. 

As Sister Bernard and her little flock left the tent 
they came upon Little Elk standing rigid and vigilant 
near the entrance. He saluted in his best military 
manner and said : 


THE CELEBRATION. 


167 


“ Dakota Dick he say he gone to round up the kids 
and herd ’em home, so their priest he can go with 
Texas. I go to convent with Little Medicine-woman 
and rest of you.” 

Nobody smiled at the fifty per cent of family cares 
suddenly thrust on Dakota ; and indeed, in the ex- 
cited ride home and the enjoyment of raising their 
schoolmates’ hair with the tale they had to tell, he 
was forgotten by all except Polly and Sister Bernard. 
But these two did such full justice to every detail of 
the scene that Mother went white to the lips and put 
the fine old hand (that in its day had been modelled 
and sung) on Polly’s curly pow and said : 

“ My child, thank God for those friends of yours, 
for by His grace they have saved many a home from 
mourning this day, and ours especially. I should like 
to have special prayers of thanksgiving offered in the 
chapel to-night, and. Sister, you will go in to-morrow 

to Father to find out how that young hero is, 

God bless him ! ” 

The little service was held, and was very devoutly 
shared in by all the Sisters and a number of the ten- 
der souls among the children ; but two of the funny 
little creatures were found before bedtime howling in 
the passage because they had not been saved from the 
puma too, and thanks offered for their escape ! 

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE CELEBRATION. 

AS soon as Texas was up and on his feet — for his 
^ arm was not broken, and it was surprising to see 
how soon his wounds were healed — he drove out to 
see Mother and his Major-General, and was given an 


i68 


THE CELEBRATIOH. 


ovation that astonished and diverted him, until Mother 
said, with a quiver in her voice : 

“ My son, you have done a deed dear in the sight of 
Our Lord.” 

“ Why, Mother, how do you make that out ? ” 

“When you went into the jaws of death and plucked 
his beard you risked your life to save helpless chil- 
dren, and He Himself has said : ‘ Inasmuch as you do 
this to the least of these. My little ones, you do it to 
Me.’” 

Then Texas did the prettiest act of his life. He 
had been brought to one of the inner parlors, and was 
sitting near Mother ; he slipped from his chair to one 
knee, and, with a grace that would have done credit to 
a cavalier, he bent and kissed her hand. Then patting 
it awkwardly with his own sound one, he said : 

‘‘There, there, dear old lady. It ain’t any great 
shucks to kill a puma, and I reckon He ain’t a-think- 
ing much about such a trifling thing as that. Now if 
I hadn't^ He might a took notice of me long enough to 
snuff out such a mean cuss. No, no. Mother ” — he 
broke off, laughing a little unsteadily — “ you got to get 
me to doing something more than killing vermin be- 
fore the Lord’ll bother about me. Besides, Dakota 
kept back the crowd and Little Elk done his part 
handsome.” 

“ They did,”, agreed Mother fervently, “ and I want 
you three to come out Tuesday evening. The chil- 
dren and Sisters wish to give you a little entertain- 
ment — that and our prayers are all we have to offer, 
my son.” Her voice had a new note when it uttered 
those last words, and Texas gave her such a look in re- 
turn that few would have recognized his features with 
their new pallor and softness. 


THE CELEBRATION. 1 69 

When the Directress called the “ Puma Party ” to- 
gether, and told them what Mother had done, they 
were enchanted, and, with permission to do so, 
drummed up recruits incessantly. Fingers ached from 
practising ; pieces were recited and re-recited ; ta- 
bleaux were talked of but given up, for the Wardrobe 
Sisters, Sister Agnes, the teacher of the Fancy Work 
Department, and Sister Mark, who taught plain sew- 
ing, were buried to the eyes in rainbow colors, and it 
was even whispered that Mother herself took a hand 
in certain things. Refreshments gave Sister Justinian 
a chance to distinguish herself, and the Bishop was 
asked, the Governor, and about fifty guests, the major- 
ity of whom were parents of the children. 

On the evening every guest was in her or his place 
exactly at seven o’clock. At the back of the stage 
our flag and the papal flag were draped, and the stage 
itself was decorated with palms and azaleas, rubber- 
plants and japonicas, for a rich benefactor had given 
the nuns a conservatory. He was a non-Catholic and 
had once, in a fit of rage (he was given to them), 
sworn that no Roman Catholic should ever have a 
penny of his money ; when told he would think better 
of it he flew into another, and recorded his determina- 
tion at the court-house. Then he fell very ill with 
small-pox, and one of the Bon Secours nursed him 
through it with such angelic patience that he spent his 
convalescence pondering how he could undo his work. 
Too obstinate to cancel his recorded deed, he devised 
a hundred ingenious ways of dodging it. One was 
presenting altar-pieces, altar-vessels, candelabra, and 
ciboria ; another, keeping the altars banked with 
flowers in the festal seasons ; another, presenting sta- 
tions and tabernacle-lamps to poor churches — none of 


THE CELEBRATION. 


170 

which, he argued, was giving a penny to any one person, 
and ignoring the fact that he was serving directly the 
Man of men, the Founder of the Church Himself. 
The conservatory at Glen Mary was his latest, and his 
visits to bring plants, potter about, and ask questions 
were the pleasure of his life. 

This evening he sat with the Governor and the 
Bishop, both of whom chaffed him genially about his 
“/wpious dilemma,” as the latter called it, and whom 
in turn he pleased with his wit; and next to them 
were the three guests of honor, who were lionized by 
the women and made much of by the men, until 
they would hardly have known which way to look if it 
had not been for Polly. 

Five harps and two pianos (the latter with two girls 
at each) opened the evening; and as the music was 
spirited, not too classical, and well played, it gave gen- 
eral satisfaction; Little Elk, in particular, seemed to 
be having a new sensation. This was followed by 
Annie Lee’s recitation of “ The Relief of Lucknow;” 
and, as she had a good voice, much taste, and had 
been well trained, the effect was electric on the old bene- 
factor, who was as Scotch as oatmeal and haggis. He 
stamped and applauded so uproariously that she had to 
come back; and then she half droned, half recited 
“ The Laird of Cockpen,” which reduced him to 
apoplectic chuckles for the rest of the evening — as it 
would any other Scotch body. 

Then about fifty of the girls gave a rattling little 
boat-song, and Elsie Mitchell sang “The Farmer and 
his Pigeons.” Her birdlike voice made it very real and 
very pretty, and the half-mocking, half-anxious re- 
frain. 


“ How will he ever catch them ?” 


THE CELEBRATION. 


17I 

circled higher and higher, following the flight of the 
winged runaways until, when it ended with its childlike 
mirthful “ Ha, ha ! ” the applause so startled and 
surprised her that she forgot for several moments to 
bow her acknowledgments. 

Then came the mandolin and banjo class, and, as 
Dakota said: “ They were both on in that piece,” for 
they played more than a little, and did it well. 

Then came a pretty, delicate-looking girl, with a 
peculiar little stringed instrument that sounded like a 
musically disposed mosquito; and in a high-pitched 
voice, reedy and sweet, she sang a succession of the 
strangest, gayest, saddest little songs ever listened to. 
This was the daughter of a French official in the 
Sandwich Islands, who, losing his wife, sent their only 
child to Glen Mary to stay until his term of duty 
should expire, when he would pick her up on his way 
home to France. They were the native songs she had 
learned, and were so full of melody and movement 
that Sister Blandina, the mistress of music, was anno- 
tating them as fast as she could, for fear they would 
be lost with the beautiful gentle race that composed 
them, and now, like the legendary swan, is dying to their 
sweet numbers. The instrument was also a native 
one, strange to us except in the sun-steeped pages of 
Charles Warren Stoddard’s “ South Sea Idyls,” which 
pulsate with it. 

But perhaps the most hilarious success of the even- 
ing was Jinsie’s recitation. She came on the stage 
with such a delighted and expansive grin that it spread 
like a genial infection; her eyes danced and her little 
turned-up nose seemed to sniff some subtle atmos- 
phere of fun, and the “ piece ” she selected was Mr. 
Tudor Jenks’ graphic account of “ Little Tommy’s 


172 


THE CELEBRATION. 


Monday Morning ” — a poem so true to nature (no 
matter under what flag) that it is quoted in full, for 
fear some of you may not know it. 

LITTLE TOMMY'S MONDAY MORNING. 

All was well on Sunday morning,* 

All was quiet Sunday evening; 

But, behold, quite early Monday 
Came a queer, surprising weakness — 

Weakness seizing little Tommy ! 

It came shortly after breakfast — 

Breakfast with wheat-cakes and honey. 

Eagerly devoured by Tommy, 

Who till then was well as could be ; 

Then, without a moment’s warning. 

Like a sneeze, that awful “ Awchoo !” 

Came this weakness on poor Tommy. 

“ Mother dear,” he whined, “ dear mother, 

I am feeling rather strangely — 

Don’t know what’s the matter with me; 

My right leg is out of kilter. 

While my ear — my left ear — itches; 

Don’t you know that queerish feeling?” 

“ Not exactly,” said his mother. 

“ Does your head ache, Tommy dearest ?” 

Little Thomas, always truthful. 

Would not say his head was aching, 

For, you know, it really wasn’t. 

“ No, it doesn’t ache” he answered 
(Thinking of that noble story 
Of the Cherry-tree and Hatchet); 

“ But I’m tired, and I’m sleepy. 

And my shoulder’s rather achy. 

Don’t you think, perhaps. I’d better 
Stay at home with you, dear mother?” 

Thoughtfully his mother questioned: 

“ How about your school, dear Tommy? 

Do you wish to miss your lessons ? ” 

•‘Well, you know,” was Tommy’s answer, 


7'HE CELEBRATION. 


173 


“Saturday we played at football; 

. I was tired in the evening, 

So I didn’t learn my lessons — 

Left them all for Monday morning, 

Monday morning bright and early 

“ And this morning you slept over ? ” 

So his mother interrupted. 

“ Yes, mamma,” admitted Tommy, 

“ So I have not learned my lessons ; 

And I’d better wait till Tuesday. 

Tuesday I can start in earnest — 

Tuesday, when I’m feeling brighter.” 
Smilingly his mother eyed him, 

Then she said: “ Go ask your father — 
You will find him in his study. 

Adding up the week’s expenses. 

See what father says about it.” 

Toward the door went Tommy slowly, 
Seized the knob as if to turn it. 

Did not turn it ; but, returning. 

Back he came unto his mother. 

“ Mother,” said he, very slowly, 

“ Mother, I don’t feel so badly; 

Maybe I’ll get through my lessons. 
Anyway, I think I’ll risk it. 

Have you seen my books, dear mother— 
My geography and speller. 

History and definitions — 

Since I brought them home on Friday?” 
No, his mother had not seen them. 

Then began a search by Tommy. 

Long he searched, almost despairing. 
While the clock was striking loudly. 

And at length when Tommy found them— 
Found his books beneath the sofa — 

He’d forgotten all his weakness, 

Pains and aches were quite forgotten. 

At full speed he hastened schoolward, 

But in vain, for he was tardy. 


174 


THE CELEBRATION. 


All because of that strange weakness 
He had felt on Monday morning. 

Would you know the name that’s given, 

How they call that curious feeling ? 

’Tis the dreaded “ Idontwantto ” — 

Never fatal, but quite common 
To the tribe of Verylazy. 

Would you know the charm that cures it — 

Cures the weakness “ Idontwantto” ? 

It is known as “ Butyou’vegotto,” 

And no boy should be without it. 

Now you know the curious legend 
Of the pale face, little Tommy, 

Of his weakness and its curing 

By the great charm “ Butyou’vegotto.” 

Think of it on Monday mornings — 

It will save you lots of trouble. 

So, amid laughter and applause, the entertainment 
was over, and they all went to supper, which was 
served on a number of small tables in the big play- 
room, about twenty of the girls, wearing jaunty mus- 
lin caps, kerchiefs, and aprons, waiting on the guests. 
Nearly all of them had parents present, but Annie Lee 
was one of those who had not, and she was immedi- 
ately annexed by the old Scotchman, who, after being 
helped, begged her to sit down and answer him “ twa, 
juist twa questions.” His excitement about “ The 
Relief of Lucknow ” had brought back his broad 
Scotch, and the “twa questions ” were. How did she 
come to know Scotch poetry ? and Where did she 
learn to pronounce it ? 

“Why, Mr. ,” she said, “my mother’s people 

were Scotch to the marrow of their bones, and from 
the days of Montrose — the great Montrose, I mean — 
they were out in everything worth coming out for. 


THE CELEBRATION, 


175 


until after the ’45, when they had to come out alto- 
gether; and the Scotch songs and Scotch sayings and 
Scotch poetry were as much a part of their lives home 
there in Maryland as — as — well, as honor and hospi- 
tality are.” 

‘‘ In Maryland,” he echoed. “ And what had she to 
do wi’ bonnie Scotland ? ” 

‘‘Oh, Mr. !”said Annie reproachfully. “Don’t 

you know that that wretched Hanoverian — ” 

“ That’s right, lassie,” he chuckled. 

“ — sent over four shiploads of young Scotch gen- 
tlemen who had been out for Prince Charlie, and had 
them sold on the block ? ” 

“ Eh, my dearie, I knew he and Butcher Cumber- 
land had done every trick they knew to wipe out the 
Hielandmen, but I thought it was to the West Indies 
they sent them.” 

“ Lots of them were sent there. But these four ship- 
loads came to Maryland. Of course their relations and 
the friends of their families bought them and gave 
them their freedom, but that was God’s mercy and 
Gael’s luck. Papa has copies of the lists, and they 
sound like the ‘ Gathering of the Clans.’ Then a lot 
escaped and found refuge further south, and when our 
Revolution broke out they got their chance, and, as 
Mrs. Barr says: ‘What they owed to the father they 
paid to the son.’ ” 

“ Yes, lassie, we’re good haters and leal friends; my 
people were out their ainsel’s, and it puts me in richt 
guid hert to meet a lassie wi’ a Scotch tongue. Now 
when I come out again what’ll you sing me ?” 

And Annie, without asking: “And what would you 
like ? ” looked straight into the sharp gray eyes and 
answered : 


176 


THE CELEBRATION. 


“ ril sing ‘My Ain Countrie ’ and ‘ Wae’s Me for 
Prince Charlie.’ ” 

“ Eh, but ye’re a witch, lassie. How didye ken my 
twa favorites ? ” 

And that was the beginning of a famous friendship, 
that resulted in many strange things also. 

And, meantime, Dakota and Texas and Little Elk 
were becoming more and more embarrassed by their 
popularity; for every mother present had some appre- 
ciative speech to make or pretty attention to offer to 
the men who had shown such courage and resource; 
and if it had not been for the fathers and brothers, 
who expressed their approval in less effusive ways, they 
would have bolted outright. Invitations showered on 
them. They were given a score of cards, and told 
they would be be put up at all three of the clubs in 
town. The Bishop and the Governor invited them to 
dine; and the old Scotchman gave them the freedom of 
his house, “ for ye’re richt fine callanls,” he said, “ and 
what ye did was weel done.” In a word, to their in- 
tense surprise — and discomfort, until they tried it — they 
found themselves plunged into what they had often ridi- 
culed as “sassiety,” and were strongly tempted to cut the 
whole affair, as they confided to Polly. But she scout- 
ed the idea, and laid down the law to them as follows : 

“ You’ll do no such thing. You must accept every 
invitation, and do your level best for the credit of 
Jack and Severn Reach. I want everybody to know 
the sort of fellows our boys and our band are ; and,” 
she added, looking at them critically, “ you all will 
give ’em a pretty good idea.” At which they fairly 
beamed, for this little girl represented and embodied 
to them the highest and best type of life they had ever 
seen in their very checkered careers. 


THE CELEBRATION. 


77 


The next time Polly was called to the parlor she 
stood amazed, for there arose to greet her three figures 
that might have stepped out of a fashion-plate— close- 
cropped hair, Prince Albert coats, light gray trousers. 
Ascot ties, scarf-pins, buttonhole bouquets, and 
beavers! 

They stood in a solemn row, and Texas asked 
anxiously: 

“ That all right, Major-General ?” 

“ Why,” said Polly, walking up and down before 
them, and round and round them, “ it’s — it’s — im- 
mense! When did you do it ?” 

“ Just as soon as you told us to.” 

“ / didn’t ” began Polly, amazed. 

You said we had to hold up our end of the proces- 
sion for the credit of the ranch, and had to show ’em 
we knew what’s what. So we upped and went to Mr. 
Singleton ” (the leading banker of the city, whom they 
had met at the celebration), “and told him the fix we 
were in, and asked him to give us a straight tip ; 
and he upped and sent his son round with us to his 
own tailor — and,” he concluded with a dark look, “ we 
had a lively time of it for awhile, but he says we are 
all right now." 

“You must be,” declared Polly, with enthusiasm, 
“ for you look lovely! But what’s the matter with your 
heads ? ” 

“ Collars,” answered Texas briefly. “I feel like I 
was looking over a fence with nothing to stand on. 
Dakota don’t dare to sneeze, and Little Elk’s about 
half choked; but that fellow said we had to; and he 
give us some shirts, so stiff and shiny a fly’d break his 
neck off of ’em; and some low-neck vests, and some 
coats like your father wears — coats that ain’t anything 


178 


THE CELEBRATION. 


but a shell-jacket with a couple of weepers hanging 
down the back, like a hat at a funeral; and these here 
headache-traps,” holding up his beaver and regarding 
it with strong disfavor, “and these here gloves — but 
I struck there, Major-General. It’s bad enough to be 
caught by the throat, and to have my head sand- 
papered; but when all ten of my fingers got jammed 
in a wad, and no more use than the butt-end of a rifle, 
I just kicked like a steer. What you think, hey ? ” 

“ I think,” said Polly, “ you can leave the gloves off 
of your hands; but I’d carry ’em round, for the Gov- 
ernor did that the other night.” 

“ And me and the Governor got to keep up the 
fashions, eh?” said Texas, with a grin. “Hear that, 
you two ? ” 

“ Now tell me what have you been doing, boys?” 
asked Polly. Everyihmg'' 

“We been going into sassiety,” answered Dakota, 
while Little Elk’s stolid face looked more like a 
Roman medal than ever over the sharp line of collar 
that cut the chin so severely. “ We been to teas and 
balls and theatres and operas and ” 

“ And Dakota’s adopted a hundred kids and a lot of 
Sisters,” interrupted Texas. 

“Yes,” said Dakota. “Texas is so stuck on this 
convent and his Mother, and got so uppity about it, 
I had to go off and start an opposition show.” 

“ What do you both mean ? ” asked Polly. 

“ Why,” said Dakota, “ you know those kids that 
were squirming and hollering in front of the puma the 
day Texas went and made a Roman gladiator of 
himself?” 

“ Oh, give us a rest ! ” growled Texas, “and stop 
calling names.” 


THE CELEBRATION. 179 

And Polly said: “ Why, Dakota, I didn’t know you 
knew about gladiators.” 

“ Oh, I’m just learning things by the mile, I am,” 
grinned Dakota. “ I’d never heard of ’em before, but 
I seen Bob Downing the other night, and I know all 
about ’em now. He’s got a tiptop show, and he’s a 
ripper.” 

“ But about Dakota’s convent. What convent is 
it?” asked Polly, returning to the charge with interest. 

“ Orphan asylum,” he answered for himself. “ When 
Texas was laid up at the padre’s house, I sort of hung 
around, me and Little Elk ” (Elizabeth herself could 
not have been more gentle or devoted than they were), 
“ and every day, just like clockwork, there come to 

the door the prettiest old lady ” 

Except Mother,” said Texas. 

“ Shut up, you greaser; this ain’t your put. As 
I was saying, she was the very prettiest old lady 
ever I see. She wore a big, floppy white bonnet, and 
had a white yoke and headstall; and she always had 
two little girls with her, and when I’d go in she’d say 
‘ Good-morning’ as chippy as a catbird, and then she’d 
ask for Texas. She called him ‘ that young man that 
saved all my little orphan children’s lives,’ and she’d 
say: ‘ Tell him all those little innocent souls are praying 
for him every morning and every night, and an old 
woman is saying her beads for him every day.’ And 
then she’d say ‘ Good-by,’ and I’d say ^ Good-by,’ and 
off she’d trot. And first I used to laugh to think what 
the boys would say when they heard about the com- 
pany we were keeping — priests and nuns and such 
like. But one day I said to her: ‘ Say, I ain’t in this, 
am I ? ’ ‘ The praying ? ’ she asked, quick as a wink. 

‘Yes, you are, all three of you; for you every one 


i8o 


THE CELEBRATION. 


helped.’ And you can laugh if you want to, but I tell 
you I kind of liked it. 

“And then one day she didn’t come, and the next 
day she didn’t come, and that evening I put out for 
her asylum and asked what was up. And it turned 
out she was down, for a bike had knocked her over 
and shook her considerable. So, I went inquiring 
every day, and got to be real chummy with the other 
old lady that come in to see me, and she told me a lot 
about the kids and let me see ’em playing round. And 
the way they got a good time out of a corral about 
forty foot square that they called a * yard,’ and 
clothes-pins for dolls, and chips and sawdust for play- 
things, would a made a bunco-steerer turn missionary.’’ 

“ And interrupted Texas, “he took to sneaking 
out there with candy a7id doll-babies and tea-sets afid 
croquet-balls — ’’ 

“ Look-a-here,” said Dakota, “ soon’s I get this here 
garote off my neck I’m a-going to hammer you ! ’’ 

“ — and glass alleys and a football — ’’ 

“ Didn’t,” said Dakota; “ I just asked Sister Monica 
— that’s my old lady — if it wouldn’t be a good thing 
to set ’em to playing football so as to liven ’em up a 
bit.” 

“ — and games,” Texas continued to chant. 

“Didn’t again,” protested Dakota; “ Sister wouldn’t 
let me. Said they were too expensive.” 

“ Well,” said Polly, “you certainly are good, Dakota; 
but Sister was right — they are expensive.” 

“ They ain’t a patch on some of the games I’ve paid 
for in my time, Major-General,” answered Dakota 
(which was truer than Polly could imagine); “besides, 
I got enough of a pile left to run me two weeks longer, 
and I can head for home as soon as I’m busted.” 


THE CRIB-STRAW. 


I8l 


Then followed a lively description — a duet from the 
two Dicks, with a grunt. now and then from Little Elk 
— of the good time they’d had the night before at the 
Armory, where young Singleton, who belonged to the 
National Guard, had taken them to dine, and where 
they had met a lot of capital young fellows. After 
dinner they had all drifted naturally into the shooting- 
gallery, and there they in turn had entertained their 
entertainers, and made endless engagements of a 
healthy, safe kind — athletics, boating, shooting — that 
carried them to and over the limit of their holiday. 

And their reports, given semi-weekly, sometimes to 
Polly, sometimes to Mother, sometimes to the insepa- 
rable Pentagon, and frequently to all together, were not 
only a source of much amusement, but fully justified 
Polly’s pride and confidence in “ our boys and our 


band.” 


CHAPTER XVII. 

THE CRIB-STRAW. 

winter closed in early that year at Glen Mary, 



and the holidays were drawing near. 

So many of the girls lived at a distance that there 
was little home-going, and abundant preparations were 
always made for Christmas week. 

In the first place there was a long sleep after the 
midnight Mass, there was a tree, there was a dinner 
given by Mother at one o’clock, and a supper given by 
the girls at seven and made up from the boxes received 
from home. This last was great fun, the “ surprises ” 
being frequently covered until the contributor would 
reveal them with some clever couplet, some bright 


i 82 


THE CRIB-STRAW, 


little speech, or some invitation to share it that seemed 
very amusing to the light hearts gathered “ round the 
mahogany tree.” 

The end of the week was made notable by the 
senior and junior holiday prizes. These were greatly 
valued, because they were always one of three things 
which, within limits, the winners could chose for 
themselves. 

Mother had found that a hundred girls with time 
hanging idle on their hands soon got demoralized, and 
discipline so relaxed that it was not easy to re-establish 
it for some days after the New Year; yet she could 
not bear to curb the pleasure or curtail the holiday of 
these healthy, hearty young spirits, so she devised 
the prizes for which they must work two or three hours 
each day, choosing their own time provided it did not 
interfere with meals or exercise. It was never for the 
same thing twice in succession, the lists were open to 
all the classes, and the subject was given out by 
Mother herself the week before. 

In order to leave a clear field for itself the Pentagon 
had been up to its eyes in loving Christmas mysteries 
since Thanksgiving day, with the result that, as Jinsie 
finally declared: “From being harmonious molecules 
we’ve become repellent atoms.” In the stunned 
silence that followed her learned(?) plaint she con- 
tinued : “ Let’s not do it any more. Let’s sit together, 
back to back if we must, but near enough at any rate 
to talk, I’m forgetting how.” 

So it came about that they were once more fondly 
united, but with a slight difference that gradually 
forced itself on Polly’s notice, and finally resulted in a 
little experience that exalted even while it discouraged 
her. She had noticed for several days after the re- 


THE CRIB-STRAW. 


1S3 


union that Elsie, Jinsie, and Dolores would slip away 
to the sodality-room every morning, and sometimes 
at noon and five o’clock as well. Gwendolen went 
also, but not so often; and indeed all the Catholic girls 
were coming and going more or less frequently, espe- 
cially during the last week of Advent. 

One afternoon she had challenged Jinsie to a bout 
at single-stick, and that young person had said: 

“All right; wait a minute,” and dashed off down the 
corridor. 

“ Where are you going ? ” called Polly. 

“Be back in a minute,” answered Jinsie over her 
shoulder. 

“ Where is she going, Elsie ? ” asked Polly. 

“To the sodality-room, I reckon,” answered Elsie, as 
Gwendolen lumbered heavily past them in the same 
direction, followed by Dolores. 

“ What are you all doing — making a novena ? ” said 
Polly. 

“ Not exactly,” answered Elsie, with gentle reluc- 
tance. “ It’s — it’s — something we don’t speak about.” 

“ Oh, all right,” said Polly a trifle huffily. “ Excuse 
me for asking. I thought with so many in it it wasn't 
private.” 

“ Not saying anything is part of it,” she answered, 
laying her pretty hand on Polly’s shoulder. “ It’s a 
lovely something, and I wish you’d do it too,” she 
added wistfully. 

“ How can I if I don’t know what it is ?” 

“ Ask Sister Stephanie,” began Elsie, just as Jinsie 
with a whoop and a bound swung herself down-stairs 
and shot out of the door, calling back “ First blow ! ” 
as she ran. 

In the contest that followed Polly forgot all about 


1 84 


THE CRIB-STRAW. 


her question ; but that night, as she saw Elsie vanish- 
ing up the stairs, she went to Sister Stephanie and 
began abruptly : 

“ What are the girls doing in the sodality-room. 
Sister ? ” 

“ Getting the straw ready for the Bethlehem, 
Christmas night.” 

“ Oh, I know about the Bethlehem. Mammy Mar- 
garet made one the year the band was at Severn 
Reach. It was lovely. How big is yours ?” 

“ It fills the right side of the chapel, where the 
statue of Our Lady stands.” 

“ That’s a big one,” said Polly. “ How high are 
the figures ? ” 

“ The largest are about four feet.” 

“ What are they made of. Sister ? ” 

“ They are carved of wood, except the Christ-child ; 
that is of wax ; but they are dressed in real stuffs — 
the kings in velvet, the others in cloth, the shepherds 
in real little lambskins ; the ox and the ass are covered 
with hide, and the sheep and lambs are stuffed.” 

“ Oh, my ! ” said Polly, “ that’ll be a beauty. But 
about the straw. Can’t I help ? ” 

“ That depends on yourself, Polly,” said Sister 
Stephanie, her brown eyes looking seriously into Polly’s 
blue ones. 

“ Why, I will. Sister — if I know how,” answered 
Polly. 

“ It’s not easy ; indeed, it’s right hard.” 

“ I’m not afraid of that,” laughed Polly. “ Look 
here,” and she held out a muscular young arm whose 
outlines were boyish in their strength. 

“ It’s harder than lifting or pulling or pushing, 
Polly.” 


THE CRIB-STRAW. 1 85 

Aw, Sister, you’re playing some trick on me about 
that straw.” 

“ No, I’m not, dear. But suppose you go to the 
sodality-room, look around, and tell me what you 
see.” 

Off raced Polly , her curiosity speeding her flight, 
and popped into the room just as Jinsie was balancing 
two long straws in her hand with a look of indecision. 
Shaking her head, she put one back into the pile from 
which she had drawn it, and laid the other on a 
second much larger pile to the left. Then she shook 
her head again, crossed herself, got up from the prie- 
dieii and started down the room. The only light in 
it was a taper floating in a crimson bowl on the shrine 
of Our Lady ; so Polly could easily slip out unseen, 
which she did, accurately reporting to Sister Stephanie 
what she had seen. 

“That’s like Jinsie’s honest soul, to weigh every 
straw,” she said. “ Now, Polly, sit down and I’ll tell 
you about it. You know how the Blessed Virgin 
went from house to house seeking shelter and there 
was none, and how they turned her and St. Joseph 
away from the inn because there was no room, and 
how, at last, they found no roof for their heads except 
the old stable where Our Lord was born and laid in 
the manger. And you know how we would give any- 
thing in the world we own to have laid a soft blanket 
under Him and a warm coverlet over Him, and to have 
stood between Him and the cold that winter night.” 

“ Yes,” nodded Polly. 

“ That was denied us ; and maybe,” she added 
half to herself, “ we wouldn’t have done it if we had 
been there, so many hundreds were there and didn’t 
know the day of their salvation. But,” she continued. 


THE CRIB-STRAW. 


iS6 

“ there is a way we can show our love that not even 
the shepherds could exceed.” 

“ Oh, Sister ! His commandments ? ” 

“Yes, we can keep His great commandments, of 
course ; but there are certain other things that each 
one of us can do for His sake or — and this is lots 
harder — leave undone for His sake.” 

“ I know,” said Polly, nodding vehemently to the 
last proposition. 

“ So when Advent comes, each one, even the young- 
est, tries to make some preparation in her heart to 
welcome Him. The girls are told in their catechism 
class that during the four weeks before Christmas 
there will be a pile of fresh, clean straw laid on the 
right side of Our Lady’s shrine, and that whoever for 
the love of Our Lord makes some sacrifice, even 
though it be slight, or does some special act of devo- 
tion, or conquers her temper, or refrains from a 
sharp word, or even studies hard with the intention 
of doing well a difficult duty, that girl can slip a straw 
from the right side and lay it on the left some time 
when she is in there saying her prayers, and can do it 
unobserved. And then when Christmas eve comes 
those straws on the left side are all collected and the 
figure of the Christ-child is laid on them, and we pray 
that the little sacrifices and efforts at good deeds that 
they represent may be some small reparation to our 
dear Lord for the hard manger He lay in for love 
of us.” 

The tears were in Sister Stephanie’s eyes when she 
finished, and Polly was very silent. 

“I like it,” she said finally, “but that sort of straw 
certainly is hard to get, especially when it means not 
doing.” 


THE CRIB-STRAW. 


187 


She tried, however ; and Christmas eve, when Sister 
Evangela began to sing, on the stroke of midnight : 

“ There were shepherds abiding in the field, 

Keeping watch over their flocks by night,” 

she felt a curious thrill run through her heart as the 
vivid representation sprang into view under the elec- 
tric lights. And her eyes travelled from the Bethlehem 
to the great carved crucifix behind the altar. Yes, He 
was born for us knowing He would be crucified for us ; 
He loved us enough to leave heaven for us, and loved 
us to the end — and afterwards, and forever. 

And she felt thankful, though abashed, that she had 
been permitted to put even one straw under the little 
figure that so rosily represented the Christ-child, and 
that she had tried to do even one small act of love and 
make one little sacrifice Him. 

And for the first time in her life she caught a glimpse 
of the sweetness that lies in conquering self for the love 
of God. 

A lovely snowstorm helped the holiday fun, for the 
Sisters enjoyed it as much as the girls did, the com- 
munity being young, as a rule, happy and healthy, 
and their light hearts making them very sympathetic 
companions for the girls. 

And then there was the excitement that made it 
memorable to the Pentagon. 

Thursday forenoon, when they were in the study- 
hall working over the junior prize-scroll (the first part 
of the Gloria in Excelsis to be done in gothic letters on 
parchment). Mother Constance sent for Dolores, and 
she was gone so long that they finished the day’s task 
and returned to the playroom, where Jinsie finally 
announced her intention of knocking at the Direc- 


i88 


THE CRIB-STRAW. 


tress’ door if it was not opened by the time she 
counted a hundred ; and she began on a high key to 
chant to the required number, with shakes, staccatoes, 
and variations that reduced the others to helpless 
laughter. Just as she reached a hundred and was pro- 
longing it with a mellow roar (for even she quailed at 
the thought of keeping her word), the door opened and 
Sister Stephanie came towards them, her brown eyes 
dancing. Breathless and relieved, Jinsie stopped just 
as she said: 

^‘You are wanted at the parlor, girls.” 

“Who, which?” they asked almost in a chorus. 

“All of you,” she answered. 

“Oh, A it Jack?” cried Polly ecstatically. 

“No. Hurry, hurry, they are waiting.” 

And the four hustled down the passage as fast as 
they could fly, and into the room, where Dolores was 
clinging to the shoulder of a tall man who looked like 
a Spanish Hidalgo, and down whose cheeks the tears 
were rolling after the impulsive fashion of the Latin 
races, and who was talking to Mother Constance 
through the grating with an amplitude of gesture and 
a rush of words that made even Jinsie wonder. 

“ Papa,” said Dolores, putting one hand gently on 
his cheek and trying to turn his head as he caught his 
breath with an exhausted sigh — “ Papa, these are my 
friends.” 

Papa ! It was just like the most beautiful fairy 
tale. 

“ Oh,” said Elsie, her lovely young face lighting up, 
“ I atn so glad ! ” and she held her hand out to Sehor 
da Vigna, who rose and bowed over it as though she 
were a queen and he a knight of the court. 

“ She is our — our — Conscience, papa,” said Dolores, 


THE CRIB-STRAW. 


189 


as he murmured “ Angelita." “ And this, oh, this is 
Polly; she and Jinsie are our defenders. And this is 
our patient one,” turning to Gwendolen. 

“ And you, my little one, what are you in this 
famous group ? ” he asked, after greeting each one. 

“ Ah, papa, I’m yours, just nothing but that — your 
little, little girl,” and she flung her arms around his 
neck and cried for the joy that was swelling her 
poor little heart that had starved and pined so long for 
just such a moment. 

And Mother Constance said : 

“ Senor, you will dine with Dolores and myself; and 
meantime you and she will wish to talk together, so I 
will see you later.” 

Here Jinsie was so overcome by hearing Mother use 
words that had been perverted to slang uses that she 
bolted, and as she danced down the hall she giggled so 
joyously that the others involuntarily joined her. As 
they rounded the corner they met Marie Van Houten. 
She put her hands to her ears and called out: “ Oh, 
do hush, for heaven’s sake ! Such vulgar, boisterous 
girls as that Worthington child and this imp I have 
never seen.” 

“Oh, Chocolate-drop, dear Chocolate-drop, have you 
heard the news?” cried Jinsie, fairly “shrilling” in 
her ears. “ Dolores’ father has come. He is a Span- 
ish marquis — if looks go for anything,” she sodded softo 
voce — “and I shouldn’t be surprised if he owned dia- 
mond-mines and gold-fields and castles and estates. 
Aren’t you sorry, ‘Van Houten’s best, warranted, and 
with several gold medals,’ that you didn’t treat her 
better ? Oh,” she added, “ when she goes to court and 
the queen says: ‘Thy mother was my cousin,’ won’t you 
wish you could ask her to your coming-out ball, eh ?” 


190 


THE CRIB-STRAW. 


“What is she talking about?” asked Marie, who, 
although she had half-closed her eyes and pretended to 
cover her ears, had heard every word. 

But her two followers could not answer, and the 
four swept on, Elsie to avoid a scene, Jinsie laughing, 
Polly angry, and Gwendolen impassive. 

And by the time they had spread the news they 
discovered they did not know a thing about how it all 
happened ! 

That night, however, when SenordaVigna had re- 
luctantly parted with his treasure and gone back to 
the city, Dolores rejoined them and told them all she 
knew about it. Later Mother Constance pieced out 
many of the details ; but all summed up it came to 
this: 

While the senor was away on a business trip to 
Mexico and the United States, yellow fever broke out 
in the low country and in some mysterious way it 
leaped the river, clearing the huts and filthy hovels of 
the Indians and slaves, clearing the festering swamp 
and the reeking undergrowth, and appeared in the ha- 
cienda itself ; it had gone past the luxurious baths, had 
penetrated the beautiful room of the young mistress of 
the home, and planted its awful spear in her heart. 
She, dying, told the nurse to take the little one north 
to Bogota in the United States of Colombia, where her 
sister was a nun in the Convent of Our Lady of the 
Mountains. But either the poor young creature’s speech 
was indistinct, or the nurse was too frightened to un- 
derstand ; for, leaving the body as it lay, and stopping 
only to take the money and jewels (indicated for the 
journey and as an offering to the shrine), she fled with 
the child to the United States of North America — as 
they call our country. 


THE CRIB-STRAW, 


I9I 

When Senor da Vigna, alarmed at the silence, hur- 
ried home, he and his intendant stared aghast at 
each other, the one to find his child gone, the other to 
see his master return without her. The nun of Bo- 
gota could lend no help except her prayers, and that 
hope once gone, the senor had begun an agonizing 
search by letter through the convents of Colombia, 
and later, as a desperate chance, through those of our 
country. 

Years passed by and he had abandoned all hope, 
when one day in New York he picked up part of one 
of the big illustrateds, and on the double page saw a 
cut labelled “ Not on the Bills.” The drawing was 
spirited, and represented a large circus-tent with a 
ring of faces dwindling into specks on one side, and 
several figures standing out boldly in the foreground, 
notably one in uniform with a smoking pistol in the 
lowered hand, one with a pistol drawn on a puma that 
curved through the air in a wicked, splendid leap, and 
several fractional figures, clad in circus splendor, 
grouped about. As his eyes wandered over the details 
he suddenly gasped for breath, the perspiration stood 
out on his forehead, and his hands shook so that he 
had to lower the paper on his knees. 

“ I’m a fool,” he muttered. “ But it is as like as a 
dream.” Then he looked again, and rubbed his eyes 
as though to clear them of doubt and illusions, but 
still he muttered : 

“ Like, O Mother of God ! like as if photographed. 
So she looked the day I first saw her in Madrid, when 
the espada gave the stroke to the bull. Can there be 
another face so like my Mercedes ? ” 

Then he turned to read the account, but that part 
of the paper was gone, and with it the date. But he 


192 


THE CRIB-STRAW. 


went to the office, clutching the fragment, and by 
some persistent questioning and some patient waiting 
at last found the artist, who identified his work at 
once, adding : 

“ Finest thing I ever saw off the stage/’ 

“ But,” said da Vigna, affecting an incredulous air, 
“ is it a real affair ? ” 

“ Cert!” answered the artist, who was afflicted with 
this sort of brevity now and then. 

“ With real portraits of the people ? ” persisted da 
Vigna. 

“ Well,” laughed the artist, “ the crowd isn’t ko- 
daked, but the puma’s a likeness, and this Indian and 
this cowboy are likenesses. You see they were just the 
types I was hunting for some illustrations a fellow 
ordered for a story, and I sketched ’em in very care- 
fully. Fine, aren’t they ? And, oh yes, those two 
little girls are likenesses. By Jove, what a pair they 
did make ! One as blonde as an angel,, and the other 
as dark as a Spaniard, with eyes like stars and lips and 
cheeks like roses. If I could handle colors as well as 
I can draw,” he added modestly, “ I’d have painted a 
picture that would have knocked the spots out of the 
Academy and given the committee fits.” 

Da Vigna could scarcely control his voice, for sud- 
denly hope had sprung up and dragged him past rea- 
son to follow — what ? But he managed to ask : 

Where was this ? Who were these little girls ? ” 

“Where was it? Let me see. Hanged if I remember! 
It was — oh, wait till I get the file ! ” and the good- 
natured fellow scrambled off and came back with a 
paper in his hand. “ Here you are,” pointing to the 
head-line. And as his companion devoured the type 
he added : “The girls were from a convent called Glen 


THE CRIBS TEA W. 


193 


— Glen — it wasn’t Glencoe or Glengarry — Glen Mary, 
to be sure ! I ought to remember, for I went out to see 
if I could get pictures of those two kids to work up 
into a study. Told the Mother I wanted to put ’em 
in the paper, for I thought that would tempt her. But 
whew ! She froze me up so politely that I slid out on 
my own ice, and feel a chill every time I think of it.” 
And he laughed. 

“ Thank you, thank you,” said da Vigna with a 
fervor that surprised the artist. “ Come, dine with me, 
and we’ll drink to Maceo and smoke a box of cigars 
from his camp,” he added with a gay note in his voice 
and a new light in his eyes, for that unreasonable hope 
had grown to such a size that he had already made up 
his mind to see the face that was a miniature of the 
spirited Spanish beauty who had won his love in the 
best days of his young manhood. 

When he reached Glen Mary his heart sank lower 
at every step, and his hope and courage vanished. He 
had gone through it all so often — the expectation, the 
search, the disappointment, the despair, the return to 
the old endurance of loss. 

But Mother’s first words roused him. 

“ Madame,” he asked, “ have you ever had on your 
list of pupils the name of Dolores da Vigna ? ” 

Yes, but ” 

“ Madame,” he interrupted, falling away from the 
grating-and turning very white, “do not say she is dead!” 

“ No, God forbid 1 But ” 

“ Nor that she gone." 

“ No, nor that either. But may I ask the reason or 
your questions, sir ? ” 

“ I search for a lost child of that name, madame,” 
he answered, beginning to quiver. 


194 


THE CRIB-STEAW. 


Then Mother grew excited. 

“ She is here, my little Dolores. She is well, she is 
good; but oh, sir, if you can give the little creature 
any news of her father, she can be happy also.” 

“ Does she remember him ? Does she ask for 
him ? ” he queried faintly. 

“She remembers him with tears and love; she asks 
God for him every day. But, my dear sir, you are 
ill ” 

“ Wait,” he panted, “ it will pass. It comes so sud- 
denly after all these years.” 

“ Then,” cried Mother, delighted, you are ” 

“ Her father, who has followed her broken- 
hearted ” 

“ Don’t think of that now,” said Mother, gently, 
“ for your search is over. I beg you will not give 
way. Wait only a few moments, and the child herself 
shall comfort you.” For she feared he would faint 
outright, or go off in one of the tropical outbursts so 
foreign to our American natures. 

Perhaps it would have been better to let him do so, 
for by the time Dolores came he was rather startling to 
look at. And when Mother took her by the hand and 
led her to the grating, she shrank against her so visibly 
that da Vigna stretched out both hands and cried : 

“ Oh, my little girl ! you are not afraid of your 
papa ? ” 

Then Mother thought she had two of them on her 
hands, for Dolores put her hand to her heart, and 
looked up at her with such eyes as she had never be- 
held, and whispered : 

“ Who — who ” 

“ My darling,” answered Mother, “ what is the dear- 
est prayer of your life ? ” 


THE CRIB-STRAW. 


195 


“ Papa ! oh, papa! ” It came like a cry. 

“ Then run to him; he wants you, my little one, just as 
you have wanted him,” and she slipped the bolt and 
waited only long enough to see the two in each other’s 
arms and left them. 

She had read her office and said her beads, and was 
sitting repeating the TeDeum for the happiness in the 
parlor, when she heard a joyous pipe, that she could 
hardly recognize as Dolores’ voice, calling : 

“ Mother, Mother, may the rest of us come see papa 
— Polly and all of them ? And oh, Mother, if it had 
not been for Polly! ” and then followed the story of the 
picture that had led to her being found. And then, 
while Sister Stephanie was called from the chapel to 
find the girls, the way in which she was lost was told, 
and at dinner that day came out the story of how 
she reached Glen Mary. 

It seemed simple. But what act of God’s providence 
is ever less than a miracle of divine love ? 

Carmelita, her nurse, landed in New Orleans. There 
she found countrymen, and there — the fever found 
her. Yes; whether it had dogged her up from the 
Isthmus, or whether she brought it sleeping in her 
veins, who can say ? But she died of it, and Mother 
Ottilia, who was there on business of the Order, heard 
of what she supposed was an orphan child, and went to 
her relief. She found the people very poor, and the 
man of the house “ emancipated ”; so much so that he 
did not permit his family to differ from his views, and 
church, priests, and duties were tabooed subjects. The 
mother gave her to the nun, and Mother Ottilia brought 
her to Glen Mary, where she was soon one of the 
household. Her memories, imperfect though they 
were, soon proved her of another country and parent- 


196 


THE CRIB-STRAW, 


age than at first appeared; but she could furnish no 
clue except her name and her locket with its two 
pictured faces, its dates, and its inscription, “ Madrid.” 

Efforts had been made by the Sisters, through their 
Order, to trace her people; but as they had directed all 
their efforts to Spain, they had of course been unsuc- 
cessful. 

It would have been a very happy thing could the 
holidays have closed with this incident, for then that 
joyous week would have been a faithful echo of the 
Christmas lesson: “ Peace on earth, good will to men.” 

But alas for my Polly! 

The evening before the prize-work was to be handed 
in she was in the study-hall sitting at her desk, the lid 
half up and her head well inside, looking for a package 
she had stowed away that morning. It was nearly 
dusk, and the person who entered hastily did not see 
her, but walked immediately to Jinsie’s desk, which 
was next one of the long windows. She opened her 
mouth to call, but something unfamiliar about the 
figure attracted her, and, looking closer, she saw it was 
Marie Van Houten who lifted the lid, while a soft 
chuckle escaped her lips. 

“What a joke it would be!” she murmured, and 
reached for the wide-mouthed ink-bottle on the ledge. 
She raised it, uncorked it, tilted it, and splash it was in 
her face, over her lace collarette, her new uniform gown, 
and trickling in a dozen pungent, nasty little rills in every 
direction; and her arm was half paralyzed by the sharp 
blow she had received between the elbow and wrist. 

Waiting only long enough to hear Polly’s hated voice 
asking: “ What are you driving at now ? ” she kicked 
the ink-bottle sharply away, and, in a manner that 
would have done credit to a cafe chaniant^ she hissed: 


THE CRIB-STRAW. 


197 


“Spy!” 

“ Look here,” said Polly, “ don’t waste your breath 
talking trash, and don't make me mad. Now what were 
you doing in that desk ? ” 

“ I wanted a — a — a — Ccesar.” 

“What for?” 

“ I’m not obliged to tell you.” 

“Yes, you are. What did you want it for?” 

“I wanted to use it.” 

“ Did Jinsie say you might have it ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ I do not think so. But that can be soon settled. 
What were you going to do with that ink ? ” 

“ It’s none of your business.” 

“ Yes, it is.” 

“ It isn’t. I won’t tell you. And I’ll report you for 
striking me and spoiling my gown.” 

“ All right, then. Come along with me to Mother 
now and report,” and Marie’s wrist was caught in a 
grip she remembered only too well, and she found 
herself drawn, by a strength she could not resist, 
towards the door. 

Genuinely frightened, for she knew Polly’s resolute 
will, she said: 

“ If I tell you, will you let me alone?” 

“ That depends,” said Polly. “ But if you don’t tell 
me, I can promise you I will notl^l you alone.” 

“ Will you promise not to tell ? ” 

“ That depends, too,” said Polly ; “ but I can’t stay 
here fooling. The supper-bell will ring in a minute, 
and I don’t believe you’d like to be dragged out before 
all the girls looking as you do ; ” and in spite of her 
wrath she laughed at the appearance of the girl before 
her, who looked like a half-corked minstrel. 


198 


THE CRIB-STRAW. 


“ Certainly I do not,” assented Marie, so alarmed that 
she began to temporize. “ I was only joking, anyway.” 

“ Queer sort of joking,” said Polly, suspicious of 
the sudden change of tone. 

“ I might as well tell you — cowgirl,” she continued^ 
recovering her usual manner, “ although it’s none of 
your business. I was going to drop a spot of ink near 
her scroll, to scare her into thinking there might be 
some on it. She teases me enough, the little wretch.” 

“ Oh,” said Polly, “ the prize-scroll she’s done so 
carefully and beautifully! I see,” and her sea-blue eyes 
looked through the lie and saw she had meant to ruin 
the patient work of restless, impatient Jinsie. “ Go, get 
out of it as best you can with the Wardrobe Sisters ; 
but if you say one word of my spilling the ink on you. 
I’ll tell how it happened and where you intended to 
spill it. No, I haven’t broken, your arm — a little 
higher up would have done it, and it would have 
served you right.” And she turned on her heel and 
walked out of the room, the precious scroll in her 
hand, and a contempt in her heart that it is never good 
for one person to feel for another — since Our Lord 
died for us all. 

And Marie then and there renewed to herself her 
old promise to get even with Polly ; and I may add 
right here that during the next weeks she tried very 
hard to keep it in a variety of ways, several of which 
were as malicious as they were exasperating. 

With Polly’s explosive temper the girls would doubt- 
less have come to an open rupture had it not been for 
the memory of the crib-straw, which, while it did not 
always suffice to check her at the moment of action or 
outbreak, did give her serious food for thought, espe- 
cially after a short talk she and Mother Constance had 


THE CRIB-STRAW, 


199 


one night when they were speaking of the beautiful 
custom. 

“ It’s lucky it’s m^-straw, for it’s easier to be good 
Christmas than any other time — you feel different.” 

“ Polly,” asked Mother, “ when do the farmers in 
the Northwest sow their wheat ? ” 

“ In the Spring, Mother,” answered Polly, rather 
surprised at the sudden change of subject. 

“ And do they do that every year ? ” 

“ Oh yes, ma’am. ” 

“ And when do they reap ?” 

“In August, ma’am.” 

“ Not the same week of the sowing ?” 

“ Not quite. We’re awful smart out there, but not 
as smart as that,” answered Polly, laughing. “ We 
have to work it and look after it a Utile bit.” 

“ Well, Polly ? ” she asked with a brooding tender- 
ness in eyes and voice that fascinated her. “ Well, 
my little Polly ? ” she repeated, laying her hand on the 
bright head that always managed to be near her 
shoulder or her knee. 

“ Mother,” said Polly, “ do you mean something ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ I don’t quite know,” she answered, a puzzled look 
on her face, “ but I feel there is something. What is 
it. Mother ? ” 

“ Polly, the crib-straw is the outward sign of a few 
weeks of effort ; if it ends there, no harvest is gathered 
for the soul. You say your farmers sow once a year, 
and every year, and wait and labor patiently day by 
day, just to win bread for the world. My darling, that 
is how we have to sow again and again, year in and 
year out, and labor and wait day by day in patience, 
and often in pain and loss, to win life for our souls.” 


200 


POLLY'S REVENGE, 


CHAPTER XVIII. . 

POLLY'S REVENGE. 

JT was Shrove Tuesday, and, according to the well- 
established custom, theatricals and a pancake 
supper were the closing order of the day. 

Instead of a long play. Mother had decided on one 
short one, some living pictures, and a tableau. Miss 
Porter’s “ Place aux Dames ” was the first — a clever 
skit, full of sparkle and absurdity. The living pictures 
included “ The Guardian Angel,” “ A Spanish Lady,” 
“The Viking’s Daughter,” “In Our Lady’s Time,” 
“ The Wild West,” “ Four Daughters of the American 
Revolution,” “ A Colonial Dame,” and “ The Patroon’s 
Lady ; ” and the tableau was to be a “ fairy scene,” in 
which twenty little girls of the Kindergarten, in 
spangled skirts and gauze wings, were to represent 
Queen Mab and her court of pretty Mustard-seeds. 

The day was one long excitement. It smelt of 
paint and paste, and was littered with snips of stuff — 
and some snaps of temper — tag-ends of parts, racing 
“ fairies” who got in everybody’s way (except Gwen- 
dolen’s — she never was cross to the little creatures), 
and older girls whose nerves and crimps needed renew- 
ing. The Directress was the only composed person in 
the house, and the poor Turkey’s head bobbed more 
excitedly than ever. Elsie was in a fair way to be 
torn apart by those who contended for her — for she 
had good taste and clever fingers ; and Polly was so 
oppressed by the noise and bustle that she picked up 
her hat and fled. “ It’s worse than the big round-up 
on the Upper Ranch the last year I was home,” she 
said, and scrambled down the glen to one of her 


POLLY'S REVENGE. 


201 


favorite haunts on the banks of the brook. It was a 
little ledge of rock that hung over the water near 
enough to its surface to make it a splendid place from 
which to dabble one’s feet in warm weather. A sharp 
slope rose back of it, topped by three chestnuts grow- 
ing together. The brook was less noisy than usual, 
for it was a late Shrove Tuesday and the February 
thaw had brought down the high water some days be- 
fore, so that the little stream slipped along gurgling a 
soft accompaniment to the stillness of the grove, and 
stopping in the shallows to chatter about it. 

Everybody knows what the “ stillness ” of ‘the 
woods means — an endless succession of sounds, deli- 
cate, ethereal sounds — and Polly’s trained ears drank 
them in eagerly ; for, prairie-born, she never tired of 
the great trees and the lively, tumbling water, the moss, 
and the ferns. 

A new sound attracted her, however, the sharp snap 
of a stout twig — some one had evidently trod on it. 
She looked up, and caught a glimpse of Marie Van 
Houten dodging behind one of the trees, and thought 
immediately: “ She’s up to some trick.” But she turned 
back quietly, and sat swinging one foot as before ; for 
the early March day was as soft as though it were 
really spring, instead of the prelude to the second 
winter. Meantime she watched warily, and bunched 
her muscles for a jump as she had learned to do in the 
Indian winter at Severn Reach ; and not a bit too 
soon, because whizzing down the slope came a rock 
larger than her head, gathering an impetus as it 
bounded along that would certainly have bounced her 
into the water and might seriously have injured her 
back. With a leap that would have done credit to one 
of the young Sioux, she rolled to one side and the rock 


202 


POLLY'S REVENGE. 


splashed into the creek, where it lodged, furnishing 
immediate cause of complaint to the water, that fretted 
and shouldered with all its force against the inter- 
loper. 

Polly scrambled to her feet in a perfect fury, to 
which she gave voice in the long-drawn yell Texas had 
taught her ; she stamped her feet, flung her arms about, 
and started on a leaping run up the slope. But Marie, 
stricken either by fear or regret, had disappeared, and 
no opportunity arose to talk it over with her chums ; 
so, with the memory of it still burning, she only half- 
laughed at the fun of Portia., Ophelia, and Lady 
Macbeth, ignoring entirely the Juliet, for Marie was 
Juliet dressed as a lady of modern fashion ; while 
Ophelia wore a Delsarte gown and quoted “ Ham- 
let;” Lady Macbeth had a black stuff gown, mutch, 
and apron, with a knitting-bag, a stocking on the 
needles, and a broad Scotch accent ; and Portia wore 
an Oxford gown and mortarboard hat, and talked 
Latin (?). 

Marie looked very well, and acted with much swing 
and spirit, although she was in a temper because she 
was not allowed to wear the corsage as it came from 
New York ; but as the gown itself was composed of 
the fluffiest of full tulle skirts over silk, the tulle that cov- 
ered her neck and draped her arms was not amiss. A 
collet of very brilliant stones was round her throat, an 
aigrette of the same in her hair, solitaires in her ears — 
“ mamma’s jewels; ” the lorgnon was in full play, and 
there was a mature self-consciousness and aplomb that 
were in marked contrast to the fun, grace, and sim- 
plicity of Jinsie’s Portia, Violet Blair’s Ophelia, and 
Annie Lee’s Lady Macbeth; for grades and sections 
were levelled in the great field of theatricals, and 


POLLY'S REVENGE. 


203 


“seniors and kids were in one jolly jumble” — Jinsie 
of course said this. 

The little play was generously applauded and heartily 
laughed at, and then came what were declared to be 
the most attractive living pictures the audience had 
yet seen. 

The first was Pogie Preston, who, coming from the 
Blue Grass country of Kentucky, was built so gener- 
ously as to tower ab6ve her classmates and many of 
the Sisters and seniors. Her blonde hair streamed 
over her shoulders, and one hand was raised, pointing 
heavenward, while the other lay lightly on the shoulder 
of baby Maud Ascot dressed as a little pilgrim. Pogie 
leaned slightly forward, and the child’s eyes, lifted 
somewhat, gazed with an expectant, puzzled look into 
space — a look we see in the eyes of young children now 
and again when the problem of life seems to reveal it- 
self to their souls. In this case, though, Pogie had 
whispered: “ Can you see anything in that farthest 
corner ? I put something there for you just before the 
company came.” It was a little doll, and, as I have 
said, the result in expression was capital. 

“A Spanish Lady ” was Dolores, dressed in a full 
Andalusian costume; and the red rose in her hair, and 
the brilliant gown and jewelled fan and comb, her lace 
mantilla and radiant face, made her such a glowing bit 
of color that no one could recognize the once pale, sad 
child. 

“ The Viking’s Daughter ” was Polly. She wore a 
gleaming breastplate of scale-armor; a round steel 
cap was on her head, from which sprang glittering steel 
wings; a round shield was held on one arm, and in the 
other hand she carried a long spear. A white dress 
streamed in full folds from under the shining steel, and 


204 


POLLY'S PE FENCE. 


her simny hair, fresh color, and vivid blue eyes made a 
very attractive picture indeed. 

“ In Our Lady’s Time ” was a graceful group of girls 
dressed in the costume the Jewish maidens wore in 
the days when Pontius Pilate was governor and Herod 
tetrarch of Galilee, and each was engaged in some 
one of the duties peculiar to the nation and the day: 
one was at a loom, one had a distaff, one balanced a 
water-jar on her shoulder, one embroidered a robe. 

“The Wild West ” was Polly again, and was the out- 
come of a taunt of Marie Van Plouten’s. 

When told Polly was cast for the Viking’s daughter, 
she had cried out: “ Vtkmg's daughter ! She ought to 
be ‘ The Wild and Woolly West, or the Cowboy’s 
Daughter.’ ” 

“ I will do it,” said Polly, when she heard it, the red 
blood flashing into her face. “ I love my West with 
all my heart, and, next to being born in Maryland (God 
bless her!), Jack says the best thing in the world is to 
be born out West. We raise f?ien there, and the sky is 
so wide ” (she meant the horizon) “ and the plains are 
so big, there’s no danger of people getting their souls 
squeezed into thimbles and pill-boxes.” 

But when she went to Annie Lee and told her that 
she would rather be The Wild West than the other, and 
why, Annie had answered: “You must be both, little 
Diamond-back.” 

So when the curtain went up and disclosed her in 
her hunting-suit (which was very much like a bicycle- 
dress), with her rifle in one hand, a deer-stalking hat on 
her curls, and her cartridge-belt over her shoulder, her 
head thrust forward as if listening, her eyes shaded 
with one hand as if watching, there was a burst of de- 
lighted applause, and except for Mother’s rule of “ No 


POLLY^S REVENGE. 20 $ 

encores,” there would have been another view of her 
immediately. 

“ Four Daughters of the American Revolution ” was 
the most enthusiastically received of all, and was won- 
derfully good. A plain log-cabin interior, with wide 
fireplace and a curious mingling of rich and homely 
furnishings, was shown (the “properties” were always 
supplied from the theatre in the city). There had 
evidently been an alarm, for the dame had started 
up from her spinning-wheel, the young mother had 
rushed to the big old cradle and thrown herself across 
it, looking back in terror towards the door ; a spirited 
young figure had apparently just closed the door and 
dropped two great bars across it, while a girl of thir- 
teen or fourteen was handing her a rifle from the wall 
and loosening the powder-horn from the nail near by. 

Elsie Mitchell was the young mother; Kate Sevier 
was the figure at the door, and the spirit of “ King’s 
Mountain ” flashed in her handsome eyes. The startled 
matron was Gwendolen; her ruddy locks were twisted 
up under a pretty cap and fastened with a black ribbon 
that brought out unsuspected tints of gold and bronze 
in the fiery aureola, a black gown and trim kerchief 
subdued her outlines, and Elsie’s loving device of 
elbow-sleeves displayed her one beauty — her hands, 
which were raised in dismay at the fatal sounds of at- 
tack and fray. Jinsie was the girl, and she threw into 
her face such a delighted recognition of the occasion, 
such a reckless enjoyment of the situation, that she 
was the embodiment of that spirit that enabled our 
foremothers to defend* their homes while our fore- 
fathers fought for their country. 

“ A Colonial Dame ” was Sallie Aylett, dressed after 
the fashion of the early eighteenth century, her hair 


2o6 


POLLY'S REVENGE. 


powdered, bewitching patches on her face, and a 
dress that no one could have believed was made of 
satine, so closely did it resemble brocade. 

“The Patroon’s Lady” was Miss Meta Hoffmann; 
and if any one had gone into a certain fine old house 
on the Hudson, and walked into its picture-gallery, 
he would have been startled to see how perfect 
was the resemblance of a painted face there to this 
living one — a fine, high type that seemed to abound in 
the Netherlands about the time of “ The Rise of the 
Dutch Republic” — broad, high forehead, almond- 
shaped eyes, rounded chin, strong, reticent mouth, and 
dazzling complexion. The costume was also a com- 
plete reproduction, and the curtains fell amid genuine 
enthusiasm, and many compliments, made pleasant by 
sincerity, to the Sisters and the stage-manager. 

Then there was much rustling, and a pattering of 
little feet, and much giggling and sh-sh-sh-xn^^^ and 
little whispers and wriggles, and several warning 
“ Nows,” and finally the curtain rose on the “ fairy 
scene.” It was really very pretty, with the bright 
little faces and airy costumes, and they actually stayed 
still for two minutes — two whole minutes, and then a 
roseate glow began to beam upon them, which bright- 
ened and deepened, and a pleasant voice had just 
said: 

And when the jocund day’s first behm appears 

The whole bright train, with joyous laughter, flees 

— when there rose a succession of piercing shrieks, and 
rushing down from the sides came Marie Van Houten, 
a sight to make the stoutest heart stand still, for her 
tulle gown was blazing, and she was charging full into 
the flock of fairies. 

Every man in the audience sprang to his feet, every 


POLLY'S REVENGE, 


207 


woman buried her face in her hands ; but before she 
was fairly on the children, a ringing voice cut the 
confusion : 

“ Stop, or ril shoot ! You are stampeding the 
kids.” 

And between the blazing girl and the helpless chil- 
dren stood Polly, her rifle at her shoulder and such a 
look in her eyes that the frantic creature halted a 
moment, never doubting the bullet. That moment 
sufficed, and, springing on her like a wildcat, Polly 
caught her in her arms and rolled with her to the 
floor, beating the fire with her hands and hat during 
the few seconds it took half a dozen gentlemen to 
leap on the low stage and come to the rescue. 

One of them was a famous surgeon, and in less 
time that it takes to tell he had the burnt stuff cut 
away, the burns dressed, the singed hair clipped, and 
the girl herself tucked up in the infirmary. Then, as 
he returned to the excited company, who ate pan- 
cakes and other convent goodies with all the better 
appetite for the adventure, he met Mother hurrying to 
look for him. 

“ Doctor, I have another patient for you,” she said; 
come to the Directress’ office.” 

“ That brave child ? ” he asked. “ I wondered 
where she was. It was one of the most dramatic 
things I ever saw.” 

“Yes,” said Mother, “and she made so little of it 
that when I went to hunt for her to assure myself she 
was really unhurt, I found her sitting on the steps 
nursing her burns by herself, having slipped away 
from the congratulations as soon as possible.” 

As they entered, Polly’s attitude showed her suffer- 
ing. She sat drawn up on a cushion, her head on the 


208 


POLLY'S REVENGE. 


seat of a chair in front of her, moaning in a quick, 
gasping way that brought them both to her side. 

“How is she?” she said, straightening up and 
trying to suppress all appearance of pain in the way 
Jack had always counselled and commended as “good 
pluck.” 

“ Don’t worry about her, my child,” said the sur- 
geon. “ You not only saved her life, but you have 
also saved her face and eyes. Your friend will do 
very well as soon as she gets over the nervcus shock.” 

“ She is not my friend,” said Polly very distinctly. 

“ Here’s an original ! ” thought the doctor. 

“ Not your enemy, surely ? ” he said, smiling. 

“ That’s about the size of it,” answered Polly 
soberly. 

“ Then why did you rush to her rescue ? ” 

“ I didn’t. It was the ki — children I was think- 
ing of.” 

“ That was at first ; but afterwards when you dashed 
at her ? ” 

“ Oh, well — er, I had to. Noblesse oblige, Jack 
says.” 

“ Jack must be a fine fellow.” 

“ He is. He is the best fellow alive ” 

“ Why, how’s this ? ” interrupted'the doctor. “ Your 
wrists are badly burned, but your hands will not be 
scarred,” 

“ I don’t know,” answered Polly, “unless it’s soap- 
suds. I was washing my hands there behind the 
scenes, and had just got them lathered — it was lettuce- 
soap, and it lathers lovely,” she added with childlike 
simplicity, in amusing contrast to her heroic deed — 
“ when I saw Marie flouncing round close to the pan 
of red-light stuff Sister Pauline was burning, and then 


POLLY'S REVENGE. 


209 


suddenly she screeched and blazed up and started to 
bolt ; and then I jumped for my gun, and got between 
her and the children. That’s all.” 

“ No, my dear, it is not all. There are all those 
little lives. I am proud of my Polly,” and Mother’s 
voice vibrated with a tenderness that made Polly 
rest her curly head against her breast with a sigh of 
content. 

“ Miss Polly, where did you learn so much about 
guns ? ” asked Dr. . 

“ Jack,” she said briefly, for he was busily dressing 
some very painful blisters. 

“And can you really shoot ? ” 

“ Certainly,” she answered. “ You don’t suppose 
Jack would let me have a rifle if I didn’t know how 
to use it ! And oh. Mother, please get Cobden to 
fire it off to-morrow, take out the shell, and clean it. 
I put it way back under the washstand in the hall.” 

“ Was it loaded ? ” Mother cried in horror. 

“ Only one chamber. I was showing Jinsie how to 
slip the cartridge into the magazine just before it hap- 
pened, and I wasn’t going to leave it out of my hand 
a minute until I got your permission to shoot it clean 
for the sake of old times.” 

“ But, Polly — that unfortunate child — you threat- 
ened to shoot her if she didn’t stop.” 

“ Yes’m,” said Polly ; “ but I knew if Td shoot off 
my mouth first ” 

“ Polly ! ” murmured Mother, even in the midst of 
her anxiety, at this piece of slang. But the doctor, 
much interested, said : 

“ Yes, yes. What next ? ” 

“ I knew there wouldn’t be any next,” said Polly. 
“ She’s too big a coward-” 


210 


POLLY'S REVENGE. 


“ But if she hadn’t stopped,” persisted tiie doctor, 
“ would you have fired ? ” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

Oh, Polly ! ” said Mother. “ Don’t talk so wildly, 
my dear. You wouldn’t have shot her.” 

“Not to hurt ” (injure) “ her, of course; but, Mother, 
a flesh-wound that would have dropped her would 
have been a long chalk better than her running into 
that bunch of poor little tots, or burning to death her- 
self, now wouldn’t it ? ” 

“ Can you aim as accurately as that ? ” asked the 
doctor, his eyes dancing, for Mother was breathless 
and looked helplessly at him. 

“Doctor,” said Polly, “if you knew Jack you 
wouldn’t have to ask that. He’s one of the best shots 
out home. Why, if you throw a quarter up in the air, 
he can put a hole through it every time; and even Col. 
Cody says — that’s Buffalo Bill — that Jack can give him 
points with a rifle. So there, now ! ” 

“ He’d be a bad man to make mad.” 

“ He would not^" answered Polly fiercely, “ for he 
always gives the other fellow a fair show.” 

“ Even when he’s an Indian ? I thought Cody’s 
success came from always being the first to get the drop 
on the other fellow.” 

“ Oh,” said Polly, “ excuse me. I thought you were 
talking about Jack. And Jack’s the sort I say. Why, 
one time he came across a fellow that had a little boy 
along with him, and he was beating him so awfully that 
Jack told him to stop, and he wouldn’t and gave the 
boy a whack that broke his arm, and was going to give 
him another, when Jack said: ‘ Very well; I told you to 
stop. Now I’ll make you. Draw your gun and stand 
up to it,’ for he had three of ’em on, and Jack broke 


POLLY^S REVENGE. 


2II 


his arm just where he broke the boy’s. And the mac 
called Jack names and swore awfully, and said he knew 
Jack was one of those fire-eating Virginians that 
thought the Lord made other men into footstools for 
’em. But Jack told him: Oh no, if he’d been a Vir- 
ginian, he’d have shot him on sight for the coward he 
was, but being a Marylander, he was more — more — re- 
served ” (she meant conservative), “so he warned him 
first and shot him afterwards, to impress it on his mind 
and let him know how the poor little boy felt. Jack 
certainly is a fair fighter.’’ 

The doctor’s face was a study as this little story pro- 
gressed, and at the end he laughed until Polly thought 
he never would stop. 

“I love your Jack,’’ he said. 

“ So do I,’’ said Polly wistfully. “And if ever you 
come by Severn Reach, you just drop in and stay 
awhile, and we'll show you shooting worth seeing.” 

After she, too, had been sent off to the infirmary, 
accompanied by the faithful four, the doctor turned to 
Mother and said: 

“ That is a most uncommon girl. Tell me something 
about her.” 

And Mother did, concluding with: “ She is the finest 
natural character, the noblest nature, I have ever seen. 
Clean of heart and mind, and full of splendid capabili- 
ties, and when her spiritual nature is awakened and 
trained she will be rounded out into a ” 

“ Mother,” interrupted the doctor, hastily, “ don’t 
you round out her spiritual nature into a vocation now. 
Send her out into the world to help set it straighter 
than it is.” 

Mother smhcd, for this was only a variation of the 
long-standing dispute between them; and shortly after 


212 


MARIE. 


he left with the last guest, having paid a second visit 
to Marie which was most reassuring. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

MARIE. 

j^EXT day an account of the entertainment and its 
dramatic denouement appeared in the local pa- 
pers, the exchanges copied, and the story began to 
expand until the flames grew to pyramids, the convent 
was half consumed, Marie was burnt to a crisp, and 
Polly was injured for life. 

A shower of telegrams rained on the convent from 
all over the country, and several parents of chil- 
dren who lived within a State or two rushed to rescue 
their offspring from the flames which — on paper — con- 
tinued to burn for a number of days. 

Mother had to telegraph whole letters to Jack and 
Elizabeth ; and one day she was called to the parlor, 
where she saw a little round man, swart and snub, and 
with him the pretty maid who had come with and for 
Marie. 

She bowed, and he made a succession of ducks and 
bobs, rubbing his hands and perspiring so that his face 
looked greasy, and as he shuffled about he said: 
“ Dell the gnadige Frau, Lisa, how is my Marie.” 

And “ Lisa ” in a gentle voice, with a shy upward 
look now and then, said: 

“ Mein uncle he vant to know how is his daugh- 
ter.” 

And which of our girls,” asked Mother gently, 
“ is his daughter ? ” 

“ Vy, my cousin Marie, vat I come mit dree times,” 
answered Lisa, surprised into a full look. 


MARIE. 


213 


Mother thought many things simultaneously. 

“ Miss Van Houten is doing very well, the doctor 
says; she is entirely out of danger, and her face will 
not be disfigured at all; the scars are confined to her 
shoulders and arms.” 

“ Dot’s all righd vor dot jung girl ; but how is my 
Marie, dell her, Lisa.” 

“ Mein uncle don’t know dot name. Marie she 
maig it up,” she whispered hurriedly to Mother. Then 
louder: “ Mein uncle, Herr Hutte, says he’s glad dot 
jung lady’s well, but how is his daughter Marie ?” 

“I can only repeat the same thing exactly,” said 
Mother, loath to wound the little man, who, whatever 
he lacked in appearance, certainly loved “ his Marie.” 

Would you like to see her at the infirmary, Herr 
Hutte ? You will be less interrupted than here.” 

“ Ja, ja, ja,” he answered, bobbing about like a rub- 
ber ball. 

Mother slipped the long bolt and met them at the 
inner door; then, after asking Sister Stephanie to order 
lunch for them, she led the way to the infirmary. 

As they entered the pretty, bright room with its open 
fire — another one of Mother Ottilia’s ideas, that a sick- 
room must have the ventilation of an open fire — Marie 
was sitting listlessly, staring at nothing, her back to the 
door. 

At the sound of Mother’s greeting she turned, and 
if a glance could have transfixed, the luckless Lisa 
would then and there have been pinned to the wall 
like a butterfly on a needle. Then, as she saw her 
father, all the blood in her body seemed to rush to her 
face, and then to fade as suddenly. 

“Ah, my liddle girl ! I thought you vas burnt up mit 
de fire, und your poor old papa left mitout anybody to 


214 


MARIE. 


leaf his monies to ” — an anticlimax that might strike 
some people as peculiar, but to him was the greatest 
proof of affection; and it was evidently a reminder to 
Marie, for, controlling herself by a powerful effort, she 
said: “ How are you ? ” while Lisa’s overflowing eyes 
and outstretched hands were ignored, unless the very 
ugly word “ Fool ” was meant for her. 

The little man hovered round her chair, evidently 
anxious to say and do something ; but the girl never 
changed her attitude or manner, and at last Mother 
said : 

“ Be seated, Herr Hutte” — Marie winced — “ and 
you, Fraulein. Lunch will be ready in half an hour, 
and while you talk with your daughter and cousin ” — 
Marie winced again — “ I’ll go see our other patient, 
the young girl who saved Marie’s life.” 

“ Humph ! my life, indeed !” said Marie as soon as 
Mother was out of the room. I believe I wouldn’t 
have been burnt nearly as badly if she hadn’t knocked 
me down and rolled me over the way she did, pound- 
ing me with her fists like a guttersnipe in a wharf-fight ; 
and she threatened to shoot me, too ; so I’m under 
no obligation whatsoever to her. What did you come 
here for ? ” she asked her father sharply. 

Lisa tell me you got burnt ” 

“ I might have known that stupid idiot was ” 

‘‘ Marie !” began Lisa. 

Don’t say a word to me ! ” 

“Vy, Marie, vot de madder mit you und Lisa?” 
(“ Madder” was certainly the word, though not as he 
meant it.) 

“ Oh, nothing. I’m too sick to talk.” 

And she shut her eyes, and sat in ungracious silence 
which the two made pathetic efforts to break. 


MARIE, 


215 


Mother, returning five minutes before the half-hour 
was up, took in the situation,, and her stately figure and 
fine old face assumed an air and an expression so severe 
that the sulky girl muttered hastily : 

“ I told them I was too sick and nervous to talk.” 

Are you too sick to lunch with your relatives ? ” 

‘‘ Yes,” snapped Marie. 

“ Due allowance is made for your suffering and for 
your nervous shock, but I must insist upon a different 
manner both to them and to myself.” 

Marie stifled an outbreak with difficulty, put her 
handkerchief to her eyes, and pitched herself on the 
bed, where she burst into tears — springing from several 
sources. 

As they went through the hall a fresh young voice 
calling: “Mother! aw. Mother!” arrested them, and in 
her doorway stood Polly, her hair more rebellious than 
ever, her arms and hands swathed in batting and ban- 
dages, and her face a trifle pale from her experience. 

“ Oh, please excuse me,” she said, turning, with ready 
good-breeding, to the two Germans. “ I didn’t know 
anybody was with Mother, and I wanted to ask her 
about — something,” she ended abruptly, meaning 
Marie, but not wishing to introduce the subject to 
strangers. But Mother said : “ This is the young girl 
I spoke of, Mr. Hutte. The one who saved your 
daughter’s life — Miss Worthington.” 

“ My Marie say not,” muttered Mr. Hutte, stepping 
forward, however, into the light of the door. Then 
he paused, and, with a succession of the same grotesque 
bows and hand-rubbings, cried out with a beaming face: 

“Oh, Miss Pollee, Miss Pollee ! ven did you gome 
here, und how’s all mit you ?” 

“Why, I declare ! ” said Polly with pleasant, quick 


2i6 


MARIE. 


response to his greeting, “ it’s Mr. Hutte ! Oh ! Mother, 
it’s somebody that knows home, and Jack, and mamma, 
and all the boys.” 

“ Ja, bardicularly de boys,” and Mr. Hutte closed 
one eye, laid a fat, stubby forefinger along his fat nose, 
and winked the other, amidst a chuckling so vehement 
as to make his watch-chain dance a saraband on his 
vest-front. 

“ He gave me the jolliest doll, once, you ever saw. 
I have it yet, Mr. Hutte.” 

“ Now, now,” he said, manifestly delighted. “ But 
vot dis you done mit my Marie ? ” 

“ I haven’t done anything,” said Polly very naturally. 

“ Vy, de gnadige Frau dare say you put oud de fire 
und safe her life.” 

“/haven’t saved anybody’s life, and the only fire 
I’ve put out is Marie ” 

“Ja, ja, my Marie. Oh, Miss Pollee, how I efer 
going to thank you vor dot 1 ” 

“ Why, don’t, Mr. Hutte,” Polly managed to say as 
quietly as her wild amazement permitted. 

“But I must. Your vater my best gusdomer and 
my safiorof life und burse. Your vater’s daughter my 
Marie’s safior of life — Himmel ! ” he broke off, relaps- 
ing into bobs and inquiries for everybody at Severn 
Reach. 

Seeing the interview gave pleasure to the little man 
and brightened the face that had been overcast in his 
daughter’s presence. Mother invited Polly to lunch ; 
and while the latter and Mr. Hutte finished a few 
dozen of their questions and answers, she received 
some confidences from Lisa. On the way back, 
Lisa, who had a very proper pride of her own, had 
said : 


MARIE, 


217 


“ Gnadige Frau, I am a servant ; so if you don’t vant 
to ask me to lunch, vy don’t.” 

Mother looked at her shy, pretty face with apprecia- 
tion of her pluck, and answered : 

“ We all serve in some way, my child, and a good 
servant has the same merit in one walk of life as in 
another. To-day you are my visitor. I ask you to 
lunch as the guest of the convent which I represent.” 

So the confidences naturally followed. Uncle Hutte 
was the kindest and best of men. His brother — Lisa’s 
father — had died on the voyage out, and he had taken 
the orphan as his own child. They had settled on 
the far outskirts of Jersey City at first, but as the little 
man prospered with his pack they had drawn nearer 
to the great city across the river, and he had sent 
them to school, clothing them alike, and leaving them 
in safe care, as his ventures widened and his fortunes 
waxed. He had let Lisa choose her own trade, and 
bound her to the finest hairdresser in New York, where 
she was so apt a pupil as to secure a home in one of 
the best-known families in the city. The young ladies 
of the house were good-natured, light-hearted girls, 
unspoiled by their wealth and position as belles in the 
very smart set, and she had a happy and semi-confi- 
dential place. But Marie was very different. She did 
not look like any of the family, and was ambitious be- 
yond measure (“ awful stylish and derrible ambitious,” 
was Lisa’s version), and uncle was so proud of her that 
he gave her her own time and her own way, and allowed 
her to go to school or not as she pleased, and gave her 
much more money than she should have had. Her 
favorite amusements were going to the theatre and 
visiting Lisa. The last grew to a passion ; for when 
there was a dinner, or a dinner-dance, or a party, the 


2i8 


MARIE. 


■girls would say to Lisa: “ And Lisa,* go to see your 
cousin, if you want to,” or “ Have your cousin in for 
an hour or so, so you will not be lonesome. We’ll be 
back about — ” any time to three o’clock next morn- 
ing. On these occasions Marie would hang enraptured 
over the banisters, or gaze with envious looks at the 
costumes Lisa spread out for her young ladies or put 
away ; or she would study with curious eyes the dainty 
toilette appliances and bric-a-brac, or peep into the 
novels that lay about, or pose before the long cheval- 
glasses, until one evening she told the astonished Lisa 
“ she was going to be a lady too.” She would make 
her father send her to a first-rate boarding-school, 
where she could “ get to know desirable acquaint- 
ances,” and then all would be plain sailing ; “ for, after 
all, I’m as good as they are, and I bet I can be as 
swagger as the best of them.” 

She carried her point with her father, and after some 
time persuaded Lisa it would be “ great fun ” to mas- 
querade as mistress and maid, and for her to assume 
the name of Van Houten (borrowed from a chocolate 
label, which made Jinsie’s name for her a thorn in her 
side), and have all her mail and money sent through 
Lisa, she in turn sending her few letters to the same 
number and street, which gave a shadowy semblance 
of truth to her claim upon it as her “ home ad- 
dress.” 

By a lucky chance she came to Glen Mary, but, 
lacking good motives, good heart, and good impulses, 
she met with small success in her attempts “ to be a 
lady.” 

Hearing all this. Mother was not surprised, on leav- 
ing the lunch-table, to meet Marie, flushed and defiant, 
who said : 


MARIE. 219 

“ I’m going away. I won’t stay here to be trampled 
on and despised ! ” 

“ Who is going to trample on you and despise you ? ” 
asked Mother quietly. 

“ That Worthington girl and her gang,” answered 
Marie roughly, casting all pretence of elegance to the 
four winds. 

“ You are mistaken,” said Mother. Polly is quick 
and even brusque of speech at times, but she is too 
much of a little lady to do such a thing. Your secret is 
as safe as if still untold. But oh, my poor child,” she 
added sadly, “ why did you adopt so foolish and un- 
truthful a course ? ” 

“ It wouldn’t have been foolish if those two idiots 
hadn’t come rushing on here to ” 

“ One is your father., remember. And the folly is 
the least of it. It is the falseness that is so ” 

“I do not admit it’s false,” said Marie hardily. “If 
I choose to adopt surroundings which I like as my 
own, who is the worse for it, and whose business is 
it ? How could I make the impression I wish to un- 
less I show myself familiar with fine surroundings and 
fashionable people and places ? If I adopt them as 
acquaintances, and describe their homes, and talk 
about their friends as they do, nobody knows it isn’t 
true but myself. It don’t hurt them, and does me a 
heap of good.” 

Mother sat stupefied. The moral aspect of her de- 
ception could not be forced upon the girl. So she 
tried another tack. 

“ You say nobody knows but yourself. Ah! Marie, 
the world is a very small place, and only two days 
ago I was told you were not what you represented 
yourself.” 


220 


MARIE. 


“ I told you that hateful Who was it ? ” asked 

Marie furiously. 

“ Miss Hoffmann,” answered Mother. 

“ What ! ” almost shouted Marie. 

“ Miss Hoffmann, or von Hoffmann rather. It is 
her aunt with whom Lisa lives.” 

“ Then,” said Marie, panting with rage, “ that girl 
ought to be whipped out of the school. Of all the 
li ” 

“ You forget yourself,” said Mother coldly. 

And Marie’s mind went back over several conver- 
sations she had had with Miss Hoffmann, and each 
one stung her miserable vanity and foolish pride more 
severely than the last. 

For instance, it was owing to her that the young 
girl had been called Hoffmann, for, as Marie ex- 
plained elaborately to her friends, “ she seems to be 
a nice, quiet girl, not chic at all, of course, but con- 
nected ‘ by marriage,’ she says, with papa’s old friend, 
Mr. von Hoffmann. Mrs. von Hoffmann is a relative 
of mamma’s somehow, but indeed the Van Rensel- 
laers and Schuylers and Van Courtlands are so inter- 
married that I can hardly separate them in my own 
mind. This girl evidently belongs to a distant branch, 
bourgeois^ or perhaps even peasant, for otherwise she’d 
have jiDnped at the chance — when I explained it all to 
her — of claiming kin with us^ for my influence here, and 
my position when I come out,” etc., etc., ad nauseam. 

“ I suppose, when she told you, you both laughed at 
it as a good joke on me ? ” 

Mother’s first impulse was to rebuke her as she de- 
served ; but, unworthy as the occasion and subject 
were, the girl was suffering so genuinely that she an- 
swered very gently: 


xWAmE. 


22 


My child, ladies do not behave in that way. A 
sense of honor will insure silence much more certainly 
than all the demands and appeals for caution that can 
be made ; and charity buries away anything that 
wounds or distresses our neighbor or makes him 
undervalued in a community.” 

“ It sounds fine. But it don’t always work. And I 
bet she will tell, or you’ll let it slip some time when you 
ain’t thinking,” and she bit her nails moodily. 

‘‘ I think not,” said Mother patiently. “ And that 
you may not misunderstand, I will tell you exactly 
what she said. She brought me a letter from her 
aunt asking me to let her spend the Easter holidays 
with her, and I noticed the street and number stamped 
on the paper. They were the same as those you send 
your letters to and speak of as home. I said: ‘I did 
not know, my dear, that you and Marie Van Houten 
were cousins.’ ‘ We are not,’ was her answer. ‘ But, 
my dear,’ I said, somewhat puzzled, ‘ she lives here’ — 
indicating the address. ‘No, Mother,’ she said, ‘my 
aunt lives there and does not even know such a per- 
son.’ ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘there’s probably some mistake.’ 
‘ Perhaps,’ was her answer ; and there the conversation 
ended, for you were still on the sick-list, and I knew 
no more until I saw your relatives to-day ” — here 
Marie uttered a distinct snarl and stamped her foot — 
“and there was an end to the mystery.” 

An end! Not only .to the mystery, but to all her 
fine castles in the air. 

“ I won’t be balked ! ” cried Marie, with compressed 
lips and furious gesture. “I 7inll be a lady yet, and you 
and that hateffil, stuck-up ” 

“ Marie,” said Mother, “ listen to me, my poor 
child. The root of all good breeding is Christianity, 


222 


MARIE. 


for its two great laws are, love God so well that you will 
never offend Him, and love your neighbor well enough 
to do only as you would be done by. You have in 
^ome strange way confused the meaning of the word 
‘ lady.’ You can be a perfect gentlewoman in heart 
and mind (and that will make you one in manner) 
though born in a hovel ; while not even a palace and 
boundless wealth can ‘make you a lady ’ if you do 
not conquer yourself. Your position ” 

“ How can I have one when my father’s in traded" 
she asked with a scornful emphasis that brought a 
sparkle of indignation to Mother’s eyes. 

“ Never make the mistake of using that expression. 
It is senseless, offensive, and un-American. You 
niea7i business, I suppose, which can be made as noble 
and honorable a means of civilization as literature 
itself. And as for the trades, they are the great in- 
dustrial arts. Never offend a Catholic by speaking of 
them in such a way, for our Church is the Church of 
the working man and woman; Our Lord Himself hon- 
ored the trades by being a carpenter; St. Paul, a 
Roman citizen, was ” 

“ But he is so vulgar,” interrupted Marie. 

Mother’s patience was worn to a spider-thread, but 
she still tried earnestly to find a sign of life in this 
starved soul. 

“ He is your father, as I have reminded you once 
before; and, in the great world to which you aspire, I 
can assure you there is nothing accounted so vulgar 
as disrespect to your parents. He loves you, he does 
everything he knows how to do for you, and, fearing 
not to do enough, he has let you do as you please; and 
while this is not a wise thing, it shows great con- 
fidence, and in that same great world, I can pledge 


MARIE. 223 

you my word, there is nothing so offensive as ingrati- 
tude.” 

“But his manners!” muttered Marie, somewhat 
overawed by Mother’s air, which, as she talked, grew 
more and more that of a grande dame and brought 
back a half-remembered story of the position she had 
held among the great of this earth, and the honors and 
riches she had put aside for the poverty and toil of 
the habit. 

“ Manners,” echoed Mother. “ My dear,” she con- 
tinued quaintly, “ are yours such models that you can 
complain? Try setting him a good example. Study 
your cousin’s manner ” 

“ She’s a servant.” 

“ And a good one, I am sure. But we are speaking 
of her manners, not her occupation, and especially her 
manner to your father. It is very pretty, and her 
modest, pleasant face ” 

But to hear Lisa held up as a model made Marie’s 
cup overflow, and she burst into angry tears, reiterat- 
ing : “ I won’t stay. I’ll go right away. I’ll go 
now.” 

This was a very simple solution of the difficulty, 
and relieved Mother of her anxiety and much of the 
responsibility. 

Not all, though, for she made one more effort, and, 
before Marie finally departed, she drew her to one 
side and said: 

“ Marie, with youth, money, and your time at your 
own disposal, you ought to be able to acquire a bril- 
liant education. This will put you far on the road to 
real success in life; and if you can make up your mind 
to start in under your own name and without any of 
this dangerous and dishonorable fiction, I will give 


224 


MARIE, 


you a letter to Mother Seraphine, my dear relative, in 
New York ” 

“ You’ll tell her all about this ’• 

“No, must tell her all that is necessary when 
you enter with her. That I shall demand as a proof 
of your sincerity, and all I will tell her will be that 
you were a scholar here, and I want her to give you 
her special attention. Try, child, to retrieve these 
years, turn to God for help, and, if you are in earnest. 
He will give you grace to grow into a useful woman, 
a loving daughter, and a realX^idy.'* 

She embraced her tenderly with a heartfelt “God 
bless you!” and Marie turned up a square inch of cold 
cheek for her to touch, although she said nothing ; 
but Mother thought it a hopeful sign that she spoke 
less rudely to her father and responded, though gruffly, 
to Lisa’s timid overtures at they disappeared from the 
walls of Glen Mary. 

Polly’s last words to her were unexpected. 

“Good-by,” she had said. “We’ve had some 
very scrappy times and — but never mind that now. If 
I’d known you were Mr. Hutte’s daughter I think 
we’d have got on better, for Jack thinks a heap of him, 
and so do I. He’s the best and honestest trader in 
pelts that comes out there, and he’s as square with 
the Indians as he is with the white men. He never 
makes ’em drunk before he buys and then beats 
’em down. You ought to be proud of him ! ” 


MARQUETTE, 


225 


CHAPTER XX. 


MARQUETTE. 



NEW factor had entered Polly’s life with the 


opening of school, but its force had not become 
apparent even to herself until the winter was well 
over ; and to explain it clearly we must go back to a 
letter received from Mother Ottilia in the summer. 

In this she had stated that, instead of returning to 
Glen Mary, she had received orders to found a school 
in a howling wilderness — metaphorically speaking, for 
it was in the heart of the Mormon country — and to 
put it in working order before leaving it ; and Mother 
Constance, as we have seen, was to act in her place 
with full discretionary powers. 

The two women, in spite of the difference in their 
ages, were in such full accord that no changes were 
made, projected plans were simply ripened and carried 
out, and Mother Constance inaugurated the new feat- 
ure which they had talked over together ever since 
the return of the latter from Father Conafy’s Summer 
School the year before. 

It was a class of “ Current Events,” and to this end 
several of the best papers in the country were sub- 
scribed for and were carefully scanned by Sister 
Stephanie, clippings made of the real news., and a short 
weekly lecture prepared therefrom, which was followed 
by a debate. F or, as Mother said: “ The history of our 
own times is in a way more important than any other, 
because in making it we can profit by the lessons of 
the past and must become the example or warning to 
the nations of the future.” 


226 


MARQUETTE. 


As the season advanced she wrote to a kinsman of 
hers newly elected to Congress, and asked him to send 
The Congressional Record as his contribution to her 
class; telling him how anxious the nuns were to give 
their girls an interest in current events, and knowing 
that the pros and cons of every subject of national 
importance were fully discussed in both Houses and 
faithfully reported in The Record, 

He responded heartily, and said the idea commended 
itself to him, and, thanks to her suggestion, he would 
not only send one of his copies to her, but one to his 
State college, one to the manual-training school, one 
to the agricultural college, and one to the teacher of 
the district school where he had been educated; 
adding: “For the burden of the ballot lies on the 
mechanic and the farmer.” 

Then he inquired if they had copies of the Consti- 
tution and the Declaration of Independence, as his 
wife (who was a Daughter of the American Revolu- 
tion) was much interested in having them distributed 
wherever there w'ere young people. 

To this Mother answered that every girl of fourteen 
in the school knew' the Declaration by heart, and that 
the study of the Constitution began the next year and 
ended only with the senior year, when four lectures on 
constitutional law were delivered by the four most 
brilliant jurists whom they could interest in the matter 
and whose services they could secure. 

The class of Current Events was open to all the 
sections, and Polly and Jinsie were looked upon as 
rather promising members among the younger girls; 
but one short week sufficed to turn Polly into a fierce 
partisan, and she became a debater whose fire and 
force made up for her inexperience and ignorance of 


MARQUETTE. 227 

parliamentary rulings; and the occasion of it all was — 
Marquette. 

It came about in this way : 

There is a time-honored law (Section 1,814, Revised 
Statutes of the United States) which invites and en- 
courages each State to commemorate her two most 
famous citizens by presenting their statues to the gov- 
ernment, to be placed in the Statuary Hall of the Capitol 
at Washington, there to remain as a perpetual re- 
minder of their services and our gratitude. 

This had been responded to by Wisconsin in a 
memorial that challenged the admiration of the Old as 
well as the New World; for while reserving one of her 
laurel crowns for her hero of the sword, she went 
back to the dawn of her history and laid the other at 
the feet of that hero of the cross, the Rev. Jacques 
Marquette of the Society of Jesus. 

His work as a missionary every Catholic knows by 
heart; his work as a citizen was so happily summed 
up by the Hon. Thomas Weadock in his famous 
speech at St. Ignace that it has gone into history. 

“ This modest but illustrious man,” he said, “ estab- 
lished the first permanent settlement begun by Euro- 
peans in Michigan in 1668, Sault Ste. Marie, and was 
the first white man that trod the soil of Mackinaw, or 
the State of Iowa. He erected the first cabin in 
Chicago, 111 .; discovered the tidal rise and fall in Lake 
Michigan one hundred and fifty years before it was 
noticed by another; and finally discovered and ex- 
plored the upper Mississippi.” 

Solid claims on fame and gratitude, all of them; yet 
when the statue was presented to Congress it was the 
signal for a fanatical outburst such as had never been 
heard under the dome. 


228 


MARQUEl'TE. 


But it also brought forth some of the finest oratory 
and noblest sentiment that had echoed through the 
two Houses since the stirring days before the war ; 
especially the speeches of Senator Mitchell, Senator 
Kyle, Senator Palmer, and Senator Vilas, who made 
the presentation for his State to the Senate. This 
dignified body treated the subject with much con- 
sideration, but in the Lower House the controversy 
raged, and the fame of the humble servant of God was 
trumpeted by friend and foe alike to the farthest 
limits of the English-speaking world. 

For the first time Polly learned the full history of 
the gallant exploits and saintly life of him whose name 
was as familiar to her as Jack’s own; and she de- 
voured all she could find on the subject, until from a 
shadowy though kindly regarded outline his figure 
sprang into a vivid personality, enthusiastically loved 
and ardently championed. 

She created a furore one day in the class by telling 
the story of Winona’s ancestress ; and another day the 
debate was broken up by the delighted applause that 
followed her recitation of the Rev. Dr. Rankin’s verses 
on the subject under discussion. 

This fine old Congregational minister is the President 
of Howard University at Washington, D. C. , and, as 
he tells the incident, he was passing through the ro- 
tunda of the Capitol one day when two little Irish 
boys asked him where was “the marble priest.” He 
gave the little fellows over to the guidance of one of 
the officials, and went on to his study, whence he 
launched this feathered arrow of song into the thick 
of the fight, calling the generous rebuke to his un- 
Christian brethren 


MARQUE 7' TE. 


229 


THE WHITE MARBLE PRIEST, 

“ No room in your halls for the white marble priest, 

O long-boasted land of people oppressed ? 

Your face full of terrors, your heart full of fears ? 

The man has been dead full two hundred years ! 
Ashamed to confess you owe him a debt ? 

You’ve room for Columbus, but none for Marquette. 

“ Twelve millions of people, a part of your whole. 

With Macs and Maloneys upon your pay-roll. 

They help fight your battles and help build your roads. 
They help pay your taxes, and help bear your loads. 
Ashamed to confess that you owe him a debt ? 

You’ve room for Columbus, but none for Marquette. 

“ You’ve room for De Soto, the man of the sword ; 

No room for the priest, with the word of the Lord ? 

For he stands in his robe, with his cross and his beads. 
Afraid of his Paters^ his rites and his creeds ! 

Ashamed to confess that you owe him a debt ? 

You’ve room for Columbus, but none for Marquette. 

“ You’ve room for the Pilgrims as forth they embark, 
God’s rainbow above them, in freedom’s frail ark ; 

No room for the freedom of speech and of thought 
That over the wave of the ocean they brought ? 

Ashamed to confess that you owe him a debt? 

You’ve room for Columbus, but none for Marquette. 

“ O nation first cradled in bosom of God ! 

O nation whose fathers the martyr-path trod ! 

Oh, fear not the Bible that fostered your youth, 

And fear not the churches, the pillars of truth. 

Rise up and confess that you owe him a debt : 

You’ve room for Columbus, make room for Marquette. 

Her letters home about this time were very inter- 
esting to Jack, for she wrote just as she talked, and 
question, comment, and argument — crude, of course, 
but fairly intelligent — rolled off of her pen in furious 


230 


MARQUETTE. 


haste, and she was obliged to admit that she had “ dis- 
improved ” much in her writing during those weeks. 

The reasons (?) alleged against placing the statue 
where it belonged made her rage, for even to her 
child’s mind they were illogical and un-American ; and 
finally, one day, she sat down with frowning brow, de- 
termined to get at the root of the matter. 

“ What are A. P. A.’s anyway ? And what have they 
got to do with my Marquette ? Can’t you come on 
here and tell ’em a thing or two, honey daddy? I 
get so mad I feel like a tea-kettle, all boiling up inside 
and sizzling ; for Marquette did more things and 
harder things and better things than they could ever 
do, and he did it for the good of every one of us here 
now. Mother says, and all that’ll ever come ; so I 
think it’s awful mean of ’em to try to jump a dead 
man’s claim the way they’re doing ; and oh. Jack, I’m 
glad I’ve got that medal ! The chain’s all worn out 
that Father de Ruyter gave me, so please get me an- 
other one — a strong one, for I want to begin wearing 
it again just as soon as ever I get something to hold it. 
I can’t put it on a string, for when I’m doing my gym- 
nastics I burst my strings and buttons so much that 
Jinsie says I’m like Peggoty — the one that sneezed — 
and I don’t want to lose it for anything. I was telling 
Mother about it the other day, and she says, with her 
love, will mamma write it out for her, for she thinks 
it’s the most interesting thing she’s heard for a long, 
long time. So send me a lovely double-barrelled letter 
from you and mompsey by the next mail, and don’t 
you forget to tell me what are A. P. A.’s.” 

In the mean time the attack had begun on the 
Catholic Indian schools, and this made Polly still 
madder; and as she knew what she was talking about, 


MARQUETTE. 


231 


she was allowed a much larger share of the “ floor ” 
than would otherwise have been permitted. Jack’s 
answer, however, brought about a more tranquil state 
of things, for he said: 

“ Don’t bother your head about A. P. A.’s, chicken. 
Out here they are nearly all foreigners that have been 
over from Canada such a little while they haven’t got 
their h's straight yet. One of them came to me the 
other day and asked me as ‘ a hinfluential citizen to 
join the Hay-P-Hay. ’ I asked him what that was, and 
he said: ‘The Hamerican Protective Hassociation’; and 
I asked him what it was for, and he said: ‘ To protect 
the Hamerican citizen from foreign influences and 
too much himmigration.’ I told him I didn’t think 
we needed protecting specially, that we’d been able 
to do it pretty well ourselves in 1776 and 1812, but 
that the other wasn’t a bad idea, and what else ? And 
then he told me it was to kick out the Roman Cath- 
olics, and proceeded to open up their rules on the sub- 
ject. ‘ Why, man alive,’ I said, ‘ don’t you know you’re 
talking treason?’ ‘ I hain’t,’ he said. ‘ You are,’ said I, 
‘ the rankest kind, for you’re deliberately violating 
the Constitution.’ ‘ ’Ow do you Agger that? ’ he said. 
‘ Why, you’re raising the question of religious qualifica- 
tion.’ ‘ I hain’t,’ he insisted, ‘ Hi’m protecting the 
government hagainst foreign invasion.’ ‘ Foreign 
fiddlesticks! ’ said I. ‘ You’re a foreign invader your- 
self, and a very impudent one, too, to go meddling 
with our political affairs and tampering with our in- 
stitutions. Now look here: I’m going to waste some 
good advice on you, and it’s this: When we want our 
Constitution changed well do it ourselves ; we, whose 
forefathers made it and fought for it and died for it; 
and don’t you forget it.’ 


232 


MARQUETTE. 


“ So there’s the case in a nutshell, honey. They 
are doing an unconstitutional thing. And although 
a good deal of their talk covers ground that every 
American is interested in, this religious clause is going 
to kill them as dead as door-nails. It’s been tried 
before. When my father was a youngster there 
was a ‘ Native American Party ’ formed; and it spread 
like wild-fire in the South until they found out that 
the Roman Catholics were being attacked and their 
churches and convents burned, and then it went to 
pieces like a card-house; not just because they were 
Roman Catholics, you understand, but because they 
were citizens of the United States whose rights were 
being interfered with. ^?;<?r>’body, Jew or Gentile, 
has the same rights under our laws, and father used 
to say: ‘ Look out for the fellow that tries to inter- 
fere with ’em, for the man that would oppress the Jew 
would soon attack the Christian, and the man who 
does either attacks the Constitution, and is guilty 
moreover of trying to incite a religious war.’ 

“ So, Pollikins, when these people begin orating 
about what they are going to do and about what they 
won’t let other people do, don’t you fret. They’re 
talking through their hats. For, as the great old Rail- 
splitter ” (Lincoln) “ used to say about the Know- 
Nothings: ‘You may fool all the people part of the 
time, and part of the people all the time, but you 
can’t fool all the people all the time.’ And the 
Constitution is a heap bigger thing to-day than it 
was when it was written, for we’re growing up to it. 
So study it hard, and stick to it, old lady, like a dock- 
bur, for no matter what question comes up, it can 
always decide it. That’s the way we do in Maryland 
(God bless her!), and a mighty good way it is.” 


THE TAMING OF POLL Y. 


233 


And after that Polly’s invariable question : “ Is it 
constitutional ? ” kept the debates so closely within 
constitutional lines that the papers submitted at the 
end of the year to the Governor and the Chief- Justice 
secured not only their hearty commendation, but 
brought out an expression of surprise that was a still 
greater compliment. And the fame of Sister Con- 
stance’s new study spread so that next year she had 
to have a parlor class for ladies from the city, who 
added Parliamentary Practice to the study of Current 
Events. 


CHAPTER XXL 

THE TAMING OF POLLY. 

^RENTANOVE’S noble statue keeps its place har- 
moniously by the side of Abraham Lincoln, and 
the crucifix of the one preaches the doctrine on which 
the other based his act of Emancipation. Near by 
is John Winthrop in his Puritan dress, and not far 
off is the gallant Muhlenberg, casting off surplice and 
bands, it being ‘‘the time to fight.” The vivid figure 
of Ethan Allen is almost opposite, and one can fancy 
the famous friendship that would have existed between 
the priest and the soldier ; and round that circular 
hall is ranged the rest of the bronze and marble com- 
pany whose originals helped to discover, defend, and 
weld this beautiful country of ours. 

And the world forgot the controversy and those 
who raised it ; but the work of Marquette went on. 

As the rays of a fixed star reach us years after they 
have left their glittering world, so down through the 
decades come the light of his example, the warmth of 


234 


THE TAMING OF POLLY. 


his burning zeal, and the beauty of the faith that gave 
all, suffered all, and dared all to carry the word of 
God to the wilderness. 

And to Polly’s gallant little soul this was like the 
roll of a drum to a camp, or the sound of a bugle to a 
cavalry charger, and “The Jesuits in North America” 
and “ Frontenac ” were as eagerly read by her as by 
the older generations who wonder with ever-new won- 
der at a history which cannot be robbed of its mar- 
vellous interest even by the scant and unsympathetic 
recital of bare facts by one alien in race, taste, and 
faith. 

And as she pored over the pages there came again 
and again the thought of her favorite St. Christopher, 
and his quest for the Truth of the World. These 
priests and Donnes and their Indian converts had 
shown what they could do in such service when once 
they had found Him : and she thought of Winona’s 
ancestress and the fiery road by which she had went 
her reward ; and of old Winona herself ; and of 
Wicketty-Wiz ; and, longest of all, she pondered on 
Marquette and his medal which had been given her 
the day she was born. And her heart would declare 
that was the service for her. Not yet, perhaps, for 
she remembered how hard the crib-straw had been 
to gather, but some day surely. 

And as she was nothing if not thorough, she got a 
“ Holy Week” from Mother, and followed everything 
that was said and done during the last days of the 
Lenten season. And, as these services include every- 
thing in the Old and New Testament that bears essen- 
tially on the Redemption, the course of meditations 
offered was at once the strongest and simplest she 
could have found. 


THE TAMING OF POLLY, 


235 


The Veneration of the Cross on Good Friday 
seemed to pierce her heart. The plaintive anthem : 

“My people ! what have I done to thee? Or in what have 
I grieved thee ? 

“ For thy sake I scourged Egypt with her first-born ; and 
thou hast delivered Me to be scourged. . . . 

“ I opened the sea before thee : and thou with a spear 
hast opened My side. 

“ I went before thee in a pillar of the cloud : and thou 
hast brought Me before Pilate. . . . 

“ I gave thee a royal sceptre : and thou hast given Me a 
crown of thorns. 

“ I have exalted thee with great strength : and thou hast 
hanged Me on the gibbet of the cross,” 

and the Passion appealed to her through love and 
gratitude, pity and generosity ; and she clenched her 
fists, and there broke from her soul the cry that is old 
to every one of us : “ Oh, if I’d only been there to do 
as that brave lady, Veronica, did ! ” And a burning 
envy of the glorious destiny of Simon of Cyrene 
seized her, and with wide eyes she seemed to follow 
that awful march up the side of Golgotha, until sud- 
denly, with a start, she saw that the tabernacle door 
was open, the shrine empty ; and such a strange 
sense of desolation fell on her that she flew to Mother 
at her earliest opportunity for an explanation. 

Mother told her it was because she saw the altar 
bare of its High-Priest and its Sacrifice ; and when 
Polly found that a little above her, she said : 

“ Polly, we believe that Our Lord is present day 
and night on that altar just as really and just as truly 
as He was present with His disciples and apostles 
when He walked with them teaching and preaching. 
But on this day of the year the Blessed Sacrament is 


236 


THE TAMING OF POLLY. 


taken away in memory of the desolation and grief the 
apostles and disciples felt that first Good Friday when 
Our Lord died and the sun went down on them alone 
without their Master. It is the only day when the 
tabernacle is empty, and seeing it so helps us to re- 
member that, although the Jews and the Romans cruci- 
fied Our Lord, our sins were His real executioners. It 
is the only day in all the hundreds of years that have 
gone by since the first Mass that none is said ” 

“ When was the first Mass ? ” almost whispered 
Polly. 

“ The night before He died — Holy Thursday, when 
He instituted the Sacrament of the Eucharist at the 
Last Supper and was both Priest and Sacrifice, and 
commanded this to be done in perpetual commemora- 
tion of Him. ‘ A mystery of faith ’ He called it ; and 
truly it is the greatest miracle that even God’s love 
could work,” and Mother gazed with awe-struck eyes 
towards that heaven whose happiness is the Presence 
of the Lamb of Calvary. 

The joyful reaction of Easter, without any lowering 
in the lofty plane of thought, was another beautiful 
thing to ponder. For instance, each member of the 
household, whether nun or girl, meeting on that happy 
morning would say : 

“ Christ is risen. Alleluia ! ” And the answer : 
“ Yes, He is truly risen. Alleluia ! ” had a ring of joy 
and exultation that carried one back to that won- 
derful morning when the angel rolled away the stone, 
and the sun looked down on a redeemed world. 

Everything breathed of it, everything suggested it. 
Even the Easter eggs proved to have their unexpected 
lesson. They were not altogether a novelty to Polly, 
for every man and woman from Maryland has always 


THE TAMING OF POLLY. 


237 


had Easter eggs, like Joseph’s coat of many colors ; 
but the way they had them at Glen Mary was new. 

On Easter Monday, if it was fair, the Directress 
announced, just after prayers, that immediately after 
breakfast three hours would be devoted to hunting for 
Easter eggs ; the little girls to hunt in the barn, the 
big girls in the Glen. And then would follow such a 
royal scramble that it did to laugh over for the rest of 
the week. The eggs were tucked away in every sort 
of place where a person would not think of looking, 
and each find was greeted -with cheers and applause. 
Then, when as many eggs as could be stowed away 
were eaten, they all went to the campus and rolled the 
rest till the grass looked as if a load of kaleidoscopes 
had been smashed upon it. 

“ Why rabbits ?” asked Jinsie that Monday when, 
as she expressed it, she was “ filled with happiness, 
eggs, and a deep sense of repose.” 

“ Rabbits ! ” said Polly. “ Are you delirious as well 
as torpid ? ” 

“ No. But rabbits are on the nests ” 

“Look here, Jinsie, come right along to Sister 
Aloysius and she’ll give yo^u something for your head. 
You’ll be talking about hens in a burrow next,” and 
slie made sundry lunges and pokes at her, nominally 
to get her afoot, but really prodding her up to a romp. 

But Jinsie persisted : “ My head’s all right, thanks, 
but it won’t be long if you punch holes in it with 
those knuckles of yours. And it’s so about rabbits. 
I’ve seen them thousands of times — in the shop-win- 
dows, I mean,” she squeaked, as Polly flew at her, 
doing “ pinchy-crabs ” with her thumbs and fore- 
fingers. “ So I know what I’m saying ; and again, 
madam chairman, I ask what have rabbits got to do 


238 


THE TAMING OF POLLY. 


with Easter anyway ? ” And she fixed questioning eyes 
on Elsie, who she answered that Mother Ottilia had 
once told her it was a German custom to build nests 
in the flower-gardens, fill them with gayly colored eggs, 
and then either actually set plaster rabbits on them, or 
call them “ Easter rabbits’ nests ” to please and puzzle 
the little children about the wonderful, beautiful eggs 
which no hen that ever scratched or squawked could 
account for. 

“Saved that time,” said Polly; “but, for that mat- 
ter, why eggs, as Jinsie would say ? ” 

“Because,” answered Elsie, “they are a symbol of 
the Resurrection.” 

“ Look here,” said Polly, “ everything about Holy 
Week that I’ve been reading means something. Now 
does everything else mean something too ?” 

“ Yes,” said Elsie, “everything.” 

“ So whichever way you turn you get reminded ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Elsie. “ Father Bernard says : ‘ If we 
study our holy faith and follow the law’s of God, 
we’ll learn to ’ — wait,” and she pulled out the “ ser- 
mon-book ” in which she was making notes for Jinsie 
(for although she had been confirmed the last year^ 
she asked permission to review the instructions with 
this year’s class). “ Here it is : — ‘ we’ll learn to dis- 
cern God in the grain of sand as well as in the whirl- 
wind.’ ” 

“No,” said Polly, “I don’t mean that way; but, 
in your Church, clothes ” (she meant vestments), 
“candles, pictures, — everything reminds you of some- 
thing about Our Lord and the saints and all that, so 
you can’t forget and will always do what you ought 
to ” 

“ Oh, Polly, Polly^ dont say that ! ” cried Jinsie, her 


THE TAMING OF POLLY. 


239 


careless face so full of dismay that Polly hastily 
said : 

“ Why, what’s the matter ? I hope I didn’t say 
anything you all don’t like,” and she reddened sensi- 
tively. 

“ No, not the way you mean; but you’ve given me a 
most awful dig. You see that’s how it ought to be, 
but, oh me ! more than half, three-quarters — nearly all 
the time I don’t remember. I do wonder if I’ll do 
any better after I’m confirmed,” she added dejectedly. 

“ Of course,” said Elsie confidently. 

“ Oh ! get out of here. Miss Conscience ” — for she 
had adopted Dolores’ quaint little name for her — 
“ in the words of Mr. Guppy’s mamma, ‘ Get out ! ’ 
I don’t believe you ever had a prize-fight with your- 
self in your life.” 

“ Why, Jinsie ! ” 

“ I don’t. But just you wait,” she added ominously, 
“ until you try it, and get knocked out in the first 
round, and have to pick yourself up with your breath 
gone, and your eyes bunged up, and your mouth full 
of dirt ” 

“ Why, ////J/V.'” 

“ You'll find out ‘ who’s darkin’ up de hole,’ ” and 
then in her whimsical way she began the refrain of an 
old plantation hymn she had heard Mississippi Quit- 
man sing : 


“ ‘ Who’s a trompin’ down de seed ? 

It’s Sat-an, ole Sat-an. 

Who’s a-sowin’ cockle-burs? 

Ole Sat-an in de fiel’. 

Go, go drive him ! Go, go drive him ! 

Go, go drive him — ole Sat-an — from de fiel’.’” 


240 


THE TAMING OF POLLY. 


A silence fell on the girls for a few minutes, and 
then Polly asked : 

“ What do you mean by ‘darkin’ up de hole’ ?” 

Jinsie began to laugh. 

“ It’s a story I read in a paper about two colored 
men that went hunting up in the mountains of some 
wild, uncivilized place — Virginia, or maybe it was 
Maryland — ow! Maryland it must have been — and 
they tracked a bear to its hole — ” 

“ Den,” murmured Polly. 

“ — and he was out; so one went inside with a club, 
and the other stayed outside to watch. Presently the 
bear came along and started to go in too, and just as 
he got half-way in the fellow outside made a jump, 
grabbed him by the tail, and hung on for dear life. 
The bear began to howl — ” 

“ Growl” (Polly’s parenthesis). 

“ — and the man screeched and yelled to the one 
inside: ‘Kill him, kill him!’ But he'd gone sound 
asleep; and when he heard the howling and bawling 
he woke up, and didn’t know where he was at — as they 
say in Maryl — ow-w-w ! I'll be black and blue to- 
morrow. And when he found out, he didn’t like it a 
bit ; so he called : 

“ ‘ Who dat darkin’ up dat hole ? ’ 

“And the one outside puffed and panted and said : 
‘ Ef dis here tail gibs way, jw/’// find out who’s darkin’ 
up de hole.’ And ‘ de tail ’ of my good resolutions 
generally does gib way, and — ” chanting again: 

“‘It’s Sat-an, ole Sat-an, 

Go drive him from de fiel’.’ ” 

“That’s just it,” said Elsie eagerly: ‘Go drive him 
from the field.’ Don’t you remember last year ? F'ather 


THE TAMING OF POLLY. 


241 


Bernard said our souls are a field, a field of battle, and 
Confirmation makes us soldiers of Christ to fight and 
conquer in His name. We talked about it then.” 

Polly remembered. Jack had told her all about that 
sort of a battle when he advised her to hold on to her 
temper; but instead of the brilliant personal campaign 
he had sketched so cleverly, here was a fight waged for 
love’s sake through gratitude, with the promise of a 
victory beyond the dreams of even this same beloved 
Jack’s ambition — a battle such as Marquette had 
waged, a victory such as he had won. 

And I think it was then and there that Polly made 
her choice, although it was not until just before school 
closed that she wrote a letter which included this: 

“ I’m so crazy to get home, my own daddy, to see 
you all, that I believe I shall kiss the very puppies and 
colts for joy. 

And I’ve got something very solemn I want to talk 
over with you and mamma. It’s about my being a 
Catholic — if I can make a good one.” 

To which Jack replied : 

“ My honey, your mamma and I can’t wait for you 
to get home. We’re coming to Chicago to meet you. 
And as for your wasting a kiss on those puppies and 
colts (and oh, Pollikins, there are some beauties this 
year !), you won’t get a chance while the prettiest 
woman in the world and your old daddy are there to 
get ’em. 

That is a serious thing to talk about, and we’ll 
have all summer to do it in. I like what you say: ‘ if 
I can make a good one.’ Don’t ever try to do anything 
until you’re sure it’s the best thing to do — the right 
thing — and then don’t undertake it until you’re ready 
to work your level best. Remember Davy Crockett’s 


242 THE TAMING OF POLLY. 

motto : ‘ Be sure you’re right, and then go ahead ! ’ I 
can’t endure people who begin things and then 
‘slump’ in the middle.” 

And they did talk it over in the summer, and all 
summer; for although Polly went back to her old, joy- 
ous, open-air life, although she was still the darling of 
every man, woman, and child in the country, the idol 
of the “ boys ” and Mammy Margaret, although she 
romped with the puppies, tried all the three-year-olds, 
and left no yearling uninspected, there was a change 
in her that made Jack raise his handsome, grizzled 
head higher and say proudly: “ She’s growing into a 
woman, God bless her ! ” But made Elizabeth say: 
“ She’s finding her soul; God help my darling to the 
light!” And the talks between the mother and daughter 
were as searching and tender as became so grave a 
subject; while the talks the father and daughter had 
touched a range wider afield, for Polly found out 
what he thought, and Elizabeth what Polly thought. 

And the upshot of it was that Jack said, in the last 
conversation the three had together : 

“ I’ve always tried to do what a Maryland gentle- 
man is bound to — respect the religious beliefs of others. 
No matter how they differ from his own, he must give 
the same freedom to them that he demands for himself. 
Lord Baltimore set an example to the world, and made 
the old State the cradle of true liberty. There we 
respect all churches that are trying to serve God the 
best they know how. And although I don’t know 
much about Catholics myself, I do know Father 
Carroll and Father Richards at Georgetown; and 
I’ve met their Cardinal. So, if you are sure of your- 
self, I say go ahead. What do you think, Bess ? ” 

“ I say as you do. Jack. But oh, little daughter, do 


THE TAMING OF POLLY. 243 

be sure before you bind yourself in any way, for a 
promise to God is an awful and a holy thing.” 

“ Yes’m,” said Polly ; “ and it was mammy’s making 
those promises for me that set me thinking of trying 
to keep ’em.” 

Which speech repeated to Margaret made her a 
happy woman for all her days. 

And they blessed very tenderly that curly head so 
full of new thoughts and so dear to them. But when 
they got back to Glen Mary and Jack told Mother 
that he and Elizabeth were willing for Polly to go 
under instruction, he was entirely unprepared for the 
joy that shone in her eyes, for the tenderness that 
vibrated in her voice, and made her hands tremble as 
she held them out and cried : 

“ My Polly, my little darling ! Thank God He has 
permitted me to see this ! Oh, sir, I feel as though I 
were now indeed ready to be dismissed in peace. I 
thank you from my soul.” 

“ My word ! ” thought Jack as he bowed, she cer- 
tainly believes my Major-General is doing something 
worth while” — a thought he had to repeat as often as 
he met nun or pupil to whom Polly told the news. It 
seemed to fly through the community and school like 
a flash of electricity, and he was thanked and blessed 
amid such a jubilation that the oneness of belief and 
the joy of their faith impressed themselves upon him 
forcibly. 

She made her First Communion at the next mid- 
night Mass ; and, united more tenderly and closely 
than ever with the Pentagon and Mother, we leave her 
at Glen Mary, busy, happy, ‘‘ rounded out.” 

And so through continuous effort, with disappointing 
failures now and then, but an ever faithfully renewed 


244 


THE TAMING OF POLLY. 


struggle, the taming of Polly is coming about. Her 
will is not broken, but strengthened and directed ; her 
joyous spirit is not clouded, but is made bright by the 
light that shines on pure souls ; and her glad young 
heart is made more glad by the joy that is the inherit- 
ance of the children of the Kingdom. 


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